


With sorrows to impart

by fandammit



Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Just ALL THE ANGST, also i'm serious this is the slowest of all slowburns, and all my schneider family headcanons, slowburn to the nth degree
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-04-17 05:17:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14181618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandammit/pseuds/fandammit
Summary: “Do you think the fact that I can’t cry...do you think that makes me a bad person?”She shakes her head firmly, without hesitation.“Absolutely not, Schneider.” She reaches down to cup his cheek, as though she can transfer her certainty through the tips of her fingers. “I actually think you’re one of the best people I know.”Schneider comes to Penelope's door the night his mother dies. All he wants is to not be alone in that moment; what he finds is so much more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt from [deandratb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb) which got way out of control: schneider goes to penelope's door in the middle of the night, instead of the other way around

It’s 11:30 at night by the time she gets through the thick stack of her pathophysiology flash cards, which is a full hour sooner than she thought she’d be finished with them. She’d had nearly three and a half hours of blissful, uninterrupted silence and she makes a mental note to thank her mom and Alex and Elena for basically leaving her alone since the end of the dinner.

She neatly files her flashcards in the plastic flashcard keeper Elena got her, tracing her fingers over the letters in “You can do it!” written in Elena’s firm, slanting script. She smiles as stacks her books on top of the each other and goes around and tidies up the living room. She’s about to turn the lights off when she hears a soft knock on the door.

Given how late it is, she figures it can only be Schneider, so she just waits for him to come barging into the room since the knock is only ever really announcing his entrance rather than asking for permission.

He doesn’t, though she can hear him shuffling back and forth in front of her door.

She furrows her brows and opens the door.

“Wow Schneider, actually waiting to be invited in? You feeling ok?”

He waits a beat too long before he reacts, just stares at her with this intense mix of relief and bewilderment. It’s so disconcerting that she immediately reaches out for him, grabbing his forearms and pulling him inside.

“Hey, what’s going on? Are you ok?”

He looks at her and then looks around the room - the dim lights, the stack of books on the kitchen table. 

“I’m sorry it’s so late. I know you have a test tomorrow.”

It doesn’t answer her question at all, and she wonders if he even heard it. She chews on the corner of her lip and steers him towards the couch, pulls him down to sit next to her.

“What’s wrong, Schneider?” Because at this point she knows that something must be. For all that he comes in and out of their house during the day, she can’t recall him every stopping by their house late at night.

If anything, it’s been her showing up announced at his door in the middle of the night. But it doesn’t escape her notice that every time she’s done that, it’s because something major has gone on in her life.

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just sits there with his arms crossed in front of him. He has an almost faraway look in his eyes, and that scares her more than anything. The Schneider she knows is always so present in the moment, always so intensely there, that to see him looking so absent throws everything off-kilter.

She leans closer to him to see if she can catch the smell of alcohol coming off of him, but all she can smell is his shampoo mixed with the scent of those lavender candles he always likes to burn in his apartment.

She’s about to ask him if he’s been drinking, even though she doesn’t think he has been, and even though she isn’t sure he’d tell her if he had relapsed, when he clears his throat and leans forward with this elbows resting on top of his thighs.

“So, my uh -.” He clears his throat again and glances over at her, fully present in the moment for the first time since he walked into the apartment. “I just got a phone call that my mom died.”

She covers her mouth, then instinctively reaches forward and takes his hand.

“Oh my God, Schneider. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok,” he says quickly, like it’s an automatic response queued up in his brain. “I mean, I guess she’d been sick for a while - cancer - so this didn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” He clears his throat again and shrugs. “Anyone but me, since I didn’t even know she was sick.” He licks his lips, then takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly. “Guess she forgot to mention that when she made her yearly Christmas call.”

A wave of sympathy rolls through her at his words, and she moves closer to him as she wraps both of her hands around his.

“Maybe she didn’t know then. I mean, cancer can spread fast and - .”

He shakes his head.

“She’d been sick for the last year and a half, Pen. She just never bothered to tell me.”

It’s as close to bitter as she’s ever heard him be.

"You know, I've been up in my apartment, trying to cry for the last hour. Wanting to cry. But - ." He makes a slicing motion with his hand and shrugs. "Nothing." He glances at her from the corner of his eye. "That's weird, right? That has never really happened to me before. Remember that Lowe’s commercial that used to be on all the time? Sob city."

She nods, but doesn’t say anything because she can tell he has more to say. She just sits and keeps ahold of his hand in both of hers, her thumb gently brushing back and forth against the contours of it.

“But now?” He shakes his head. “Nothing, not a single teardrop, not even that burning in your eyes when you want to cry but are trying not to because you’re sitting in your doctor’s office and Mulan is on mute on one of the tvs and it’s that scene where she reunites with her father at the end the movie.”

“That scene does always get me.”

“Right? It’s so good.” He huffs a laugh, though it’s more hollow sounding than anything. “But now, even though I know I’m never going to reunite with my mom, I still can’t.” He sighs. “Nothing, Pen. There’s nothing there.”

He runs his hand over his beard, one side, then the other, and shakes his head.

"That's wrong, right? I shouldn't - that shouldn't be the way it is."

"Your mom just died, Schneider. Nothing needs to make sense right now." She wraps her arms around him. He immediately drapes his arm over her shoulder and tugs him closer to her, rests his cheek on top of her head.

“I wasn’t going to come down - I know that your test tomorrow is a big deal.”

She shakes her head.

“That test is just a test, Schneider. You’re a big deal. This is a big deal.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and she can hears him swallow thickly.

“So, I was sitting there, with my phone in my hands, trying to cry. And I started thinking - I bet I could cry if I had a drink. I was a really emotional drunk.” He clears his throat. “I figured I should head down here rather than to the liquor store.”

She squeezes him tightly.

“I’m really proud of you that you did.” She breathes in deeply, then reaches up and takes her hand in his. “And I am just really, really glad you came down here. You’re not going to have to go through this alone, Schneider. Whatever you need, we got you.” She lifts her head to look at him, so that he knows just how important this is to her, how important he is to her. “I got you.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up as he nods.

“Thanks, Pen.” He takes a deep breath in. “You know, just telling you all that - it made me feel better. Or, you know, not as weird.” He squeezes her hand and shifts away from her. “I should probably let you sleep though.”

She hears the sound of metal rings sliding across a metal bar, and turns to see her mother silhouetted in the dark behind them.

"You will sleep here tonight, Schneider.” She walks over and gives him a gentle stare, her hand resting on Penelope’s shoulder. “I will sleep with Lupita and you will sleep in my bed."

Schneider puts his hands out in front of him.

"Lydia, you don't have to do that."

"It is done."

She walks over to him and brushes her hand through his hair, then kisses him very gently on the forehead.

"Go to sleep, mijo. And in the morning, we face it together."

She sees Schneider swallow thickly, then nod.

“Ok,” he says quietly.

Her mother squeezes her on the shoulder, then shuffles quietly down the hall.

Penelope stands up and holds her hand out.

“C’mon, Schneider, you heard the woman.”

He looks at her, then looks at her hand before he takes it and lets her pull him off the couch.

She keeps hold of his hand, leading him around the couch and to her mami’s bed like he couldn’t navigate around this entire apartment with his eyes closed. He doesn’t seem to mind though, if the firm grip on her hand is any indication.

He lays down and pulls the covers over him, his long frame just barely fitting on the pullout bed.

“Get some sleep, Schneider,” she says, reaching over to pluck the glasses from his face and set them down on the nightstand. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He nods, squeezes her hand once before letting go.

She turns to go, already trying to create a list of things in her head that she thinks might help him get through this.

“Hey, Penelope?”

She stops at the edge of her mami’s room and turns around.

“Yeah?”

He squints in her direction and she knows he must not be able to see her from this far away, so she moves back over to the bed. He looks up at her, his blue eyes wide, guileless as always, soft and uncertain in a way that makes her heart ache.

“Do you think the fact that I can’t cry...do you think that makes me a bad person?”

She shakes her head firmly, without hesitation.

“Absolutely not, Schneider.” She reaches down to cup his cheek, as though she can transfer her certainty through the tips of her fingers. “I actually think you’re one of the best people I know.”

He smiles up at her, his cheek scratching up against the palm of her hand, his eyes bright in the dim light of the room.

“Yeah?”

She nods again, once, decisively.

“Yeah.” She brushes her hand across his cheek, then pushes a few flattened strands of hair away from his face.

He closes his eyes at the sensation and leans into her touch, sighing quietly. She smiles and indulges him -- because his mom has just died and he’s wondering if he’s a good person and he deserves to understand just how much he is -- and runs her hand through his hair a few more times before she reaches down to take his hand.

“Good night, Schneider.”

He breathes in deeply but doesn’t open his eyes, just squeezes her hand once before letting go.

“Good night, Penelope.”

* * *

 "Did you ever meet her - Schneider's mother?" She asks in the quiet of her bedroom, her arms around her mami, their foreheads pressed together. The loss of Schneider’s mom heightens her realization that her own mami is getting older everyday, that no tomorrow can ever be guaranteed.

Her mother brushes her hand through her hair the way she used to when Penelope was a child.

"Once. She visited him in rehab - the fifth time."

"Oh, that's nice."

But her mami just makes a dismissive noise.

“And where was she the fourth time? Or the sixth? Where was she to celebrate every year after that?” Her mother shakes her head. “She did not love him like he needed her to. Like he deserves.”

“Maybe it was too painful for her to keep seeing him like that,” Penelope says, though she’s not really sure why she’s defending a woman who didn’t even tell her own son that she was sick. She thinks maybe it’s a blindspot of hers - mothers. Because her own mother has always been so dedicated, so loving, so present, she cannot think of how mothers wouldn’t be.

“And what about Scheider’s pain?” Her mother says sharply - not at Penelope, but out of the deep affection that she knows her mother has for Schneider. “Knowing that your own mother and father are alive, but choose to leave you alone? No. That is shameful. It is not what a mother should do.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, because, really, she doesn’t disagree. She can’t.

She sighs.

“Poor Schneider.”

Her mother nods.

“Sí, pobrecito Schneider.” She kisses Penelope on the forehead. “Now, before you take a shower tomorrow, make sure you take out the rum and the cooking wine and the nyquil that I put in your bathtub.”

“Ok - wait, what?”

“It is the last place that Schneider will think to look.”

And, well, she can’t argue with that. Still -

“Do you really think that’s necessary? It’s been over seven years, Mami. And we’ve drank around him plenty of times.”

“He is grieving, mija. And grief sometimes makes us do things we shouldn’t, so it is up to us to make sure we keep him from doing something he will regret later. That is what a family does.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning, she wakes up extra early to see how he’s doing, and finds him already up and sitting at the kitchen table while her mom fixes breakfast in the kitchen.

She comes up behind him and gives him a hug, then sits down next to him and keeps her hand on his arm. She’s normally not this casually affectionate with him, but she knows that Schneider is a tactile person. She wants to comfort him in whatever way he needs.

“How’d you sleep?”

He gives her a small, sad smile, and she thinks it’s sadder than if he’d not given her one at all.

“I didn’t really.”

“Was it the bed? I know it’s probably not that comfortable, especially since – .”

He shakes his head.

“No, it was fine. Your mom’s sheets are really soft.” He shrugs. “Just – you know – too many thoughts going through my head.” He gives her a thin, wan smile. “Pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve ever been able to say that.”

She wonders if the joke is some sign that he’s feeling better or if he just makes it to have some sort of semblance of normality, because it’s what she’d expect him to say. She doesn’t say anything to it either way. She finds herself suddenly struck by the urge to reach up and brush his hair away from his face, because it’s messy and flat and is falling across his eyes in a way that she’s never really seen before. But even though she’d done the exact same thing the night before, it seems too brazen in the bright daylight of her kitchen rather than in the dimness of her mother’s bedroom.

She settles on just squeezing his arm instead.

“How can we help?”

He smiles at the question, and even though it’s small, she can tell it’s genuine.

“Let me stay over here last night. Cook me breakfast. Ask me how I’m doing.” He reaches over and wraps his own fingers around her hand that’s resting on his arm. “Really, Pen, just knowing you guys are here for me – it means a lot.”

She tilts her head at him.

“You’re part of the family, Schneider. There’s nowhere else we’d rather be.”

* * *

Alex and Elena pretty much wake up on their own now, and she’s usually so rushed in the morning that she doesn’t see them until they all sit down for breakfast. 

This morning, she makes sure to stop in their bedroom and tell them about Schneider’s mom as they’re getting ready.

Alex’s eyes go wide and he immediately asks what he can do for Schneider, if they should buy him flowers, if the baseball team should send something to him.

She hugs him close and thanks the God that she’s not even sure she believes in that she has such wonderful kids. Out loud, she tells him that they just all should try their best to be there for Schneider in whatever way he needs, that flowers probably aren’t necessary but that he would probably appreciate something from the baseball team.

He nods decisively and is already texting what she assumes is the team on his phone when she goes to tell Elena.

Truthfully, she’s surprised at how upset Elena gets when she shares the news – the way  her eyes immediately start to water, her voice breaking as she breathes out, “poor Schneider.”

It’s only then that she realizes how close the two have become since Elena became the building’s handyman, because she mentions facts about Schneider and his mother that Penelope could never have known – that she’d been the one married to his father the longest, that she was the parent that he obviously missed the most, that he always sent her handmade birthday and Christmas and Mother’s Day cards.

“She’s definitely where he got his interest in art from, you know?” Elena says, blinking back tears and breathing out sharply twice to tamp down the shakiness in her voice.

Penelope nods, even though she didn’t know – didn’t know that Schneider had an interest in art, though it seems obvious when she thinks back to the amount of it in his apartment; doesn’t know why his mother would be the one he’d gotten the interest from.

She makes a mental note to ask Elena about it later. For now, she gives her daughter another hug and brushes her fingers down each of Elena’s cheeks.

“Is he gonna be ok?” Elena asks, biting her lip in worry. “I mean, what should we do? Times of acute stress are when addicts are most likely to relapse.”

Penelope nods, touched that Elena is so concerned.

“He’s gonna be ok because we’re gonna be here for him, whatever he needs.” She glances towards the hall. “Your abuelita hid all the alcohol we have here, and I know she’s already planning to basically be with him all day today. “

Elena nods slowly.

“Ok, me and Alex will figure out a way to be around and keep him busy when we get home from school, too.” She gives Penelope a determined stare. “We’re gonna make sure nothing happens to him, mom.”

Penelope smiles and leans forward to give Elena a kiss on the cheek.

“Absolutely, baby.”  

* * *

She takes her mom’s rum, cooking wine and nyquil out of the bathtub and stores them in the very back of the cabinet under her sink, then runs a scalding hot shower. She thinks about the fact that she’s never actually really thought too much about his sobriety – at least not in the way her own daughter and mother apparently have. She feels a little ashamed for how much she’s obviously taken his sobriety for granted.

She thinks about how much strength he must’ve needed to keep trying, to keep working at sobriety even when he’d relapsed once. How the amount of strength would’ve needed to double, then triple, then quadruple over time as he relapsed a second, third, fourth, fifth time.

She’s suddenly angry at Schneider’s mom for not seeing how strong her son is and has been, how much she had to be proud of – even though it seems profane to do so, even though she could accuse herself of being ignorant in the exact same way.

She steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around herself, glances down at the cabinet where all their alcohol is now stored. For all that she teases him for his endlessly indulgent personality, she suddenly realizes just how much restraint he has to have all the time. It’s stupid, knowing what she knows about Victor, seeing up close the very real demon of addiction. She’d apparently merged Schneider easy, obvious approach to life with his sobriety, when she knows that sobriety must be anything but.

She’d never made the connection before, but suddenly there’s something about Schneider’s sobriety that strikes her as being a little bit like marriage. The total commitment of mind and body, the ability to turn away from the life you might have and appreciate the life you live out every day.

Above all, it’s the choosing of it all; getting up every morning and saying –  _This is it. This is what I want to do, this is who I want to be. Today and tomorrow and for the rest of my life._

That’s pretty damn close to ‘ _til death do us part_ ,’ she thinks.

Suddenly the anger at Schneider’s mother disappears, replaced by a complicated sort of grief instead. A sense of loss that not only did his mother never appreciate how strong her son was, she’d now never know what a good partner he would make for someone, someday.

The thought leaves her feeling slightly off-kilter.

* * *

She goes out to the kitchen table and just manages to catch a worried glance between Alex and Elena.

“Schneider?” Elena asks, leaning forward and waving a hand in his direction.

He blinks suddenly and shakes his head, gives her an apologetic look.

“Sorry, Elena, what’d you say?”

“I was just asking what you were planning on doing today.”

He shuffles his feet underneath the table and crosses his arms in front of him.

“I’ll – uh – .” He clears his throat. “I’ll probably head to a meeting after this, then see if Chris has some time to talk to me after it.”

“What meeting?” Alex asks, at the same time Penelope says, “Who’s Chris?”

He turns around and looks at her, the features in face relaxing somewhat as she walks over and sits down next to him.

“Chris is my sponsor,” he says, then turns to Alex. “And an AA meeting.”

Elena furrows her brows at him.

“I thought you went to those on Wednesday afternoons?”

Penelope blinks at that and stores it in the back of her mind – another tidbit of his life that she’d never bothered to ask about.

Schneider nods.

“I do, but they have ‘em every day, and in LA, you can pretty much find one going on at every hour.” He taps his fingers across his bicep. “When I first got sober, I’d go to at least one a day. Now, I tend to just go once a week. But – .” He shrugs. “Seems like today might be a good day to get another meeting in.”

“Ah, sí, Schneider. You are right,” her mother says, coming around from the kitchen to fill his coffee cup. “And afterwards, you will come here and have lunch with me and then you will fix the garbage disposal.”  

It’s taking Schneider an extra moment or two to process everything this morning, which means that Penelope has the chance to glance at her mother with a confused look. The garbage disposal had been working fine last night, as far as she can remember.

Her mami just gives her a sly wink, then looks behind her as Schneider clears his throat.

“What’s wrong with the garbage disposal?”

Her mother purses her lips and gives an exaggerated look of helplessness.

“I do not know. Perhaps a fork or something got stuck in there. But that is why you must stay after lunch and fix it.”

“And I have a – a woodworking project that I’m working on for class…art class…” Elena says in a rush, a too-wide smile on her face that simultaneously makes Penelope want to roll her eyes at how obvious of a lie it is and hug Elena at how earnestly she wants to be helpful. “So, I was thinking you could help me with it when I got home from school?”

He looks at her, confused, before smiling and nodding.

“Yeah, absolutely. Although I thought you decided to take coding instead of art?”

“I did, but now I’m – I’m taking both!” She laughs, loud and painfully nervous. “You know, gotta pad that transcript for college, show them how well-rounded I am.”

“Yeah, sure, sure, sure,” Schneider says, adjusting his glasses. “So, what’s the project so I can figure out what tools we need while you’re at school?”

Elena blanches.

“It’s, um. Well, it’s – .”

“It’s time to head out to school,” Alex says abruptly, standing up and throwing an impatient look at Elena, who just looks relieved. “I’m sure Elena can text you sometime during the day to tell you more about her woodworking project.” He shoulders his bag. “And when you’re done with that, you can help me and the baseball team figure out what our new jerseys should look like. You’re basically the only adult we can trust not to pick something that totally sucks.”   

Schneider grins.

“Cool, I am the master of not picking out sucky things.”

“Definitely,” Alex says. He hesitates for a moment, then leans over and gives Schneider a side hug. “See you later, Schneider.”

Elena walks over and throws her arms around him, a gesture that he immediately returns, a soft look creasing his features.

Elena lets go of him and smiles.  

“So, I’ll definitely text you during the day. Probably after my computer class.” She shuffles to the side and lets out a small, high laugh. “Or, um, my art class, I mean. So I have all the details straight.”

Penelope just shakes her head at her daughter, then picks up her bag and shoulders it, grunting softly under the weight of her textbooks.

“Good luck on your test tonight,” Schneider says, eyeing her overstuffed backpack critically before glancing back up at her and offering her a small smile. “I know you’ll rock it.”

She smiles in return.

“Be here when I get home?”

He looks at her, an almost disbelieving mix of surprise and happiness that crinkles the edges of his eyes and makes her heart ache a little bit. Is it really that surprising that she would want him here?

“If you want me to.”

She nods.

“I do.” Then, because he looks so utterly – if momentarily – delighted at her answer and because, she reminds herself, Schneider takes comfort in physical gestures, she leans down and kisses him on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight, Schneider.”

He looks at her intently, then runs a hand across his beard, his fingertips passing over the spot she kissed him.  

“I’ll be here.”

* * *

It’s nearly 8:00 when she gets home that night and she nearly trips over a stack of –

“Why is there a bunch of rotting wood in my doorway?”

Elena rushes over from where she and Schneider have their heads bowed low over a stack of papers.

“Sorry, mom!” She grabs her arm and maneuvers her to the table where Schneider is. “But it’s not rotting wood, it’s reclaimed lumber!”

Penelope nods.

“Uh huh. So basically it’s what I said it is.” She gives Elena a kiss, then glances over to where Schneider is. “So, uh, this is for your art project?”

Elena nods enthusiastically.

“Yeah! See, my project is about recognizing the beauty and utility in things that have been cast aside.” She beams over at Schneider, who’s looking at her with a faint smile on his face. Penelope smiles. It’s a little on the nose, but also can’t help but admit that it’s a great idea. “So, Schneider and I went around to a bunch of warehouses, and he called a few contractors he knew and then we went to this really intense guy’s house we found in Craiglist – .”

“Yeah, let’s never do that again,” Schneider says, shaking his head. “That guy still had a flip phone. I mean, if you’re not Chris Pine, then it’s just plain weird.”

Penelope raises an eyebrow at him.

“What is it if you are Chris Pine?”

“Endearingly eccentric.”

She grins at him, a gesture that turns into a full-blown smile when he returns it, then turns back to Elena.

“So, what are you planning on making with all this reclaimed lumber? And why is it here in my doorway instead of upstairs in Schneider’s apartment where the woodworking tools are?”

“We’re going to make a new coffee table!” She looks so genuinely excited that for a moment, Penelope almost forgets that this is a for a made up class. “And anyway, most of the wood is in Schneider’s apartment. We just brought down a few pieces to try to imagine what it might look like in our apartment.”

“Yeah, we needed to envision how it would interact with the rest of your furniture,” Schneider says, nodding seriously as he flicks his gaze around the room.

“Uh huh,” Penelope says. She takes Elena by the elbow. “Hey, baby, come tell me more about your art project while I get out of my work clothes.”

“Yeah, sure.”

They head down the hall, her hand at Elena’s back. She closes the door behind her firmly, then turns to Elena.

“Ok, just to make sure I still know what’s going on –you’re not actually in an art class, right? This whole project is made up? Because you actually seem excited about it.”

Elena fidgets with her fingers and nods.

“I am excited about it, mom!” She sits down on the bed as Penelope goes to grab sweats and a tank top from her drawer. “Look, admittedly a woodworking project was kind of…out of left field.”

Penelope pulls on her tank top, then turns and faces Elena.

“Yeah, you think? I mean, Schneider’s in a bad place right now and he’s…Schneider…but he’s gonna figure out you don’t know anything about woodworking.”

“You mean I didn’t know anything about woodworking  _this morning_  when I said it,” Elena says with a smug smile. “But we have block scheduling and I’m ahead in my coding class, so I spent two hours today learning about woodworking.” She tosses her hair over shoulder. “Besides, you know Schneider likes helping people learn stuff anyway. Everyone wins!”

Penelope purses her lips, then nods slowly before pulling on her sweatpants.  

“And the art project?”

Elena fiddles with the edge of Penelope’s pillow.

“Too obvious?”

Penelope pulls her hair into a ponytail, then sits down on the bed next to Elena.

“It’s a little on the nose.” She reaches over and brushes a strand of Elena’s hair behind her ear. “But I do love the message of it.” She smiles. “I’m really glad you’re doing this for him, baby.”

Elena nods, looks down at her fingertips, twisting them together in knots.

“I just…I couldn’t stop thinking about what Schneider said to me once when I first started working for him.” She looks up at Penelope. “He said that growing up he had everything, but he was always alone.” She sighs. “And this morning, you telling me that his mom didn’t even tell him she was sick…” She shakes her head. “I just wanted to do something that let him know he’s important and a good person and –.” She bites her lip. “I don’t really do that often, do I?”

Penelope leans over and hugs her tightly, smoothing her hand across the back of her Elena’s head.

“Neither of us probably do. At least, not as often as we should.” She puts her hands on Elena’s shoulders, then moves back to look her in the eye. “But we’re doing it now. And we’re gonna make sure he always knows it. Deal?”

Elena nods.

“Deal.”

* * *

For the next few hours, Schneider alternates between talking about woodworking with Elena and baseball with Alex.

She stands in the far corner of the kitchen eating her warmed up plate of dinner while talking about the day with her mami in low tones. Schneider has apparently spent most of the day at their apartment since lunch, leaving only for an hour to take a phone call in his apartment.

“I do not know if the phone call was an hour,” her mami says quietly. “I went to his apartment to check on him after an hour and he was just sitting there, looking at his phone. So I made him come downstairs and fix the toilet.”

“What was wrong with the toilet?”

She purses her lips.

“I reached into water tank and pulled out a bunch of things.” She shrugs at Penelope’s unimpressed look. “Well, it worked, didn’t it? He has been here since then.”  

* * *

She lets the kids stay up until ten, because Schneider looks pleasantly distracted and while it is a school night, they don’t have school the next day because of a teacher in-service.

Eventually, though, she does steer them towards bed. She walks over to tidy up the kitchen after she gives them a good night kiss. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees them both give Schneider a hug before they head to bed. Even from where she’s standing, she can tell that the gesture seems to be a genuine surprise to him, even though it’s the second one he’s gotten from them that day. His surprise at the level of affection they all have for him makes her heart ache a little.

She walks back out the kitchen and leans against the kitchen table, facing him.

“Thanks for helping Alex and Elena today. Especially Elena. That art class is important to her.”

He shakes his head.

“I know that school of theirs is really good, but their woodworking program is not at all what it should be. Elena’s super smart and she’s picked up everything I’ve taught her really quickly, so it’s definitely the teacher.” He blows out a breathe. “But man, she did not know anything past the basics. We’re lucky she hasn’t accidentally taken a bandsaw right through her hand.”

Penelope bites her lip to keep from smiling, just nods and tries to keep a serious expression on her face. When she can’t, she just looks away and clears her throat, scratches at an imaginary speck on the table.

“But anyway,” Schneider says, “it was good to be able to help. Really kept my mind off of everything.”

“I’m glad.” She tilts her head at him. “How’re you doing?”

He takes a deep breath, then leans back against the couch.

“Weird.” He shakes his head. “I still haven’t cried – haven’t even felt like crying.”

“I mean, you have been here all day.”

“Yeah, and think about all the times that’s stopped me.” He gives her a lopsided half-smile. “I don’t know, Chris said that I’m still processing. That I didn’t even have time to process that she’d been sick before I found out that she had died, so everything is just trying to catch up.”

She nods.

“That sounds like it makes sense.”

He tips his head down, runs his hand over his beard.

“Yeah, I guess it does.” He shrugs, then pushes himself off the couch. He glances towards the door, seeming suddenly nervous. “Hey, uh, do you think that you could help me bring Elena’s table pieces up to my apartment? That way I don’t have to come make the trip twice.”

“Yeah, of course.”

She goes over to stack of wood and grabs the pieces he’s not able to carry, then follows him up to his apartment.

It’s messier than she’s ever seen it before, which means it’s somewhat neat instead of freakishly so. There’s a big worktable in the back that’s she’s never seen before, littered with a bunch of different tools, pencils and rulers. There’s a huge pile of wood next to it where she unceremoniously dumps her stack as well.

“Wow, how big is this coffee table you and Elena are planning on making?”

Schneider looks critically at the stack of wood.

“She said she wanted to make sure we had a surplus of materials because she would probably mess up a bunch of times and I didn’t really believe her but –.” He shakes his head. “After seeing her on the router, I’ve definitely glad we drove to five different places this afternoon.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Wow, five huh? That must’ve taken a while.”

He nods.

“Basically all afternoon until dinner,” he says, picking up a piece of wood, turning it over in his hands and then setting it down again.

She nods slowly, then tilts her head at him. He’s crossed his arms tightly in front of him, his shoulders bunched up, and he’s rocking gently back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

He bites his lip and rubs his hand across his beard, a tell that she’s come to realize indicates anxiety. She walks over to him and puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Hey Schneider, whatever it is, let me help.”

“Ok, so, I, uh.” He shakes out his hands in front of him, then takes a deep breath. “I need to ask you for a favor. And it’s a pretty big one.” He breathes out sharply. “Can you come to my mom’s funeral with me?”

“Schneider – .”

“It isn’t until Saturday morning,” he says quickly, cutting her off, “so you wouldn’t even need to miss any work, because it would be super unfair to ask – .”

“Schneider – “

“And, we wouldn’t leave until you were done with work tomorrow night and you wouldn’t even have to pay for a flight because, I mean, this is a huge favor and we’ll take a private plane, so – .”

“Schneider –.”

“And the hotel, all paid for! It’ll just be a quick fly in, fly out type of thing. I just – I haven’t been to see that side of the family in years and mom was an Irish-Catholic so the memorial service is gonna be swimming in alcohol and probably drugs and I just – .”

“Schneider!”

She tries to yell it as gently as she can and still be loud enough to derail him, attempts to soften it by putting her hands on either side of his face to get him to stop talking.

His mouth snaps shut, and the look in his eyes is some aching sense of panic and loneliness, like he’s expecting her to say no. She wonders if that has more to do with him or with her.

“Schneider, of course I’ll go with you.”

He blinks rapidly at her.  

“You will?”

“Yeah, definitely.” She runs her thumb along the edge of his cheekbone because – well – because it seems like the thing to do at the moment. “I told you – there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, reaches up to wrap his own long fingers around her hands.

“Thank you, Penelope.” He opens and smiles brightly at her. “This really means a lot to me.”

She brings her hands down from his face, but keeps their hands linked together in between them.

“Whatever you need, Schneider, I’m there.” She squeezes his hands before letting go. “And you don’t need to charter a private plane – we can take a commercial airline any time you find a flight tomorrow. Dr. Berkowitz will understand.”

He furrows his brows at her.

“A commercial flight? It’s only two hours away. It’s way easier to charter a private plane then try and figure out a flight schedule.”  

She looks at him and tamps down the voice in the back of her mind that sounds suspiciously close to Elena, the one that is going on and on about the waste of fuel and resources and money on something so frivolous. Because it’s not that she doesn’t agree with that voice, just that she knows now is not the time to disrupt what makes life easier for Schneider, to upend what he’s used to.

And besides, she’s never ridden in a private plane before. 


	3. Chapter 3

Their only afternoon appointment cancels, so Dr. Berkowitz sends her home a little before one so she can pack for the weekend.

As she drives home, she runs down a list of things she needs to stop by Target to get before she starts packing – 3 oz. bottles of shampoo, travel toothpaste, extra zip lock bags to hold her makeup.

She’s in the Target parking lot before the question even occurs to her, so she sits in her car and dials Schneider’s number.

“Hey,” he says, picking up on the first ring.

“Hey, so, do I need to get travel sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner or is it different for a private plane?”

“Yup, regular sized everything. They even provide regular sized blankets and pillows, so you can take a nap if you want.” He pauses for a moment, and she can hear rustling in the background. “By the way, what’s your shoe size? Because the plane provides warm slippers if you want them.”

“Seriously?” She laughs and shakes her head. So this is what it’s like to be Schneider. “Six and a half.”

“Preferred color?”

“Uh, no?”

“Ok, but don’t blame me if you get a color you actually hate.”

She rolls her eyes.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, Schneider.” She’s about to turn the car back on, then stops when something else occurs to her. “Oh hey, I’m at Target right now. Are there any snacks you want me to get?”

“For here?” He asks, sounding confused. “Because it seems like you guys just went shopping.”

“No, Schneider, for the plane ride.”  

“For the plane ride?” He repeats, sounding even more confused. “I already requested that they stock the snack bar with cheetos, takis, a bunch of pastels and empanadas from Porto’s.”

“Wha – seriously?” She says, narrowly avoiding what she’s thinking – rich people seriously live a different life.

“Is that not what you would’ve wanted? Because I can – .”

She shakes her head, then laughs because he can’t see her and because it’s both so absurd and sweet – the ability to stock a snack bar with exactly what you want, the fact that Schneider knows her well enough to grab all her favorites.

“Schneider, it’s a two hour plane ride. I’m not really sure what it says about me that you felt like I needed all that food for such a short amount of time.”

“I just wanted you to have options.” He clears his throat. “And I just wanna say – again – that I really appreciate you doing this for me. I know it’s last minute and a hassle and – .”

“Schneider, I’m about to spend Friday night in a private jet, eating chicken empanadas from Portos while I hang out with my best friend.” She hears him huff quietly into the phone and even though she can’t see him, she can imagine him smiling at her words. “That’s basically the opposite of a hassle. I mean, I’ve pretty much just described the best Friday night I’ve had in months.”

“Yeah?” He asks in a quiet voice, vulnerable and happy and hopeful in a way that makes her wish she was standing in from of him so she could give him a hug.

“Absolutely.”

* * *

She texts him halfway through packing because she’s too lazy to walk the flight of stairs up to his apartment where he, Elena and Alex are literally watching glue dry as they finish up the fake art project coffee table that Alex is now apparently a part of.

_Do you have one of those bag things that holds nice clothes so they don’t wrinkle when you travel?_

_A garment bag?? And yes._

_Do you have an extra one I can use?_

_I have one that fits two outfits, so we’ll just use it for both of ours._

_Great! Thanks!_

She puts her phone down, then walks over to her closet and looks at her three black dresses. She’s been looking at them for the last half hour without much luck, trying to figure out whether the black one she wore for last New Year’s Eve is too short, whether the one shoulder one is too quirky, if the long sleeved one isn’t dressy enough.

She tries to tell herself that it doesn’t matter and some part of her knows that. But the other, more insistent part of her argues that this is important to Schneider and so it’s important that she makes a good impression. She doesn’t want him to have to worry about her while she’s there – not when all he should be doing is mourning the loss of his mother.

It’s just her unfamiliarity with this side of Schneider worries her – the side of him that has private planes with custom snack bars and garment bags that she’s sure cost more than what she spends for groceries in a month.  

She picks her phone back up.

_Can you come down here and help me pick a dress? I wanna make sure I pick one that’s appropriate._

_Whatever you have will be perfect, but ok. Give me a sec so I can make Alex and Elena stop playing with the wood router._

Five minutes later, she hears a knock on her door.

“Come in,” she calls out, getting up off her bed and grabbing the three dresses from her closet

Schneider comes in and sits down on her bed.

“Everything ok with the router?” She asks.

“Oh yeah, I turned on Mario Kart for them, so that’ll keep them occupied for the next hour or so.”

She snorts.

“An hour is pretty optimistic. You’ll probably have to hide that game to stop them from playing it.”

He shrugs.

“I gave them a key to my apartment so that they can finish up the table and use the playstation or nintendo or whatever they want while we’re away.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Schneider.”

“I wanted to.” He smiles at her. “So what are our dress choices?”  

“Ok, so –.” She brandishes each dress in front of her in turn. “We have this one from New Year’s, but I think it might be too short and too sparkly. We have this one shoulder dress with this cape thing that seems a little too weird. And finally this long sleeved one that seems like it might be too casual.”

He looks carefully at each one, his eyes studying the shape of them. Then, he just shrugs.

“Honestly, you look great in all of them, Pen. Any one of those would be perfect.”

She tosses all three dresses onto the bed and sits down on the bed next to him, folding her legs underneath her but unable to keep herself from fidgeting as she stares at the dresses next to her.

He taps his fingers along the edge of his knee and stares at her closely.

“Are you worried? Or…nervous?”

“Well…” She looks away and shrugs before glancing back over at him. “Yeah, kind of? I wanna make sure I show up and make you look good. Or at least not embarrass you.”

He levels a small grin at her.

“You know that just showing up with me will make me look good, right? It won’t really matter what you’re wearing.”

She rolls her eyes good naturedly at him, but can’t help but smile as she does.

“Just – I don’t want to be underdressed. Or overdressed. I just want to be dressed.” She sees him about to make a comment and nudges him with her shoulder. “You know what I mean.”   

He crosses his arms in front of him and worries the bottom of his lip for a moment before he begins talking.

“You know, father always looks like one of those stock photos of businessmen. If it were his funeral, I’d wear my best double breasted suit, my most expensive shoes, the platinum cufflinks he got me for my 13th birthday.”

She nods. That doesn’t surprise her, given the limited amount of information she knows about his father, even given the way he says father – like it ought to be capitalized, as if it were a title rather than a relationship.

He glances over at her.

“But mom…” He breathes in deeply, looks away for a moment before glancing back at her with a sad smile. “She was an art museum curator, so she always looked way cooler than any of my friend’s moms when she dressed up. I remember she had this dress that she wore to one her openings – it was super bright blue and it had this cape attached to it that I kept grabbing and trying to hide in.”

He looks down and shakes his head.

“Uh, anyway.” He makes a sound that seems like it’s an attempt at a laugh, but sounds more like a strangled cough. He glances over at her and shrugs. “I haven’t really seen my mom in a long time, but I’m wearing the cufflinks I made myself, if that helps at all.”

“It does actually.” She gestures over to the dresses laid out on the other side of the bed. “So, the one shoulder black dress with the cape thing?”

He looks over at it, then nods.

“That one’s actually my favorite. It makes you look like a superhero.”

“Pssh, I am a superhero, Schneider.”

He smiles.

“I know.”

* * *

The plane is just what she imagines a private jet would be like.

“This is freaking amazing,” she says out loud for what’s she’s pretty sure is the fifth time in ten minutes. She walks around the length of the plushly carpeted cabin in her dark blue slippers holding a warm chicken empanada in her hands as Shneider looks at her with a mixture of fondness and amusement. “Seriously, Schneider, we’re thirty-nine thousand feet in the air, I’m wearing the world’s softest slippers while eating a fresh empanada from Porto’s.” She sits down on a long, leather couch next to him.” And now I’m sitting on a leather couch that probably cost more than my rent and it. Is. Amazing.”

He grins at her.

“I haven’t even shown you the best part yet.”

He gets up from where he’s seated next to her and goes to the far corner of the room, slides open a panel and pulls out a small tub and holds it up for her.

“I had them stock the plane with Cherry Garcia and – .” He reaches into what she now knows is a freezer and pulls out another pint sized ice cream. “Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche.” He slides the freezer door shut and pushes a button on the wall and she watches as the wall in front of her flips open to reveal a big screen tv. “Which we can eat while we sit and watch  _The Goonies._ ”  

She puts her hand over her heart.

“I love that movie.”

He smiles.

“I know. That’s why I made sure they had it.” He lifts each pint of ice cream at her and raises an eyebrow. She points to the Dulce de Leche, which he carefully tosses over to her before turning and fiddling with a wall-mounted touch screen next to him.

She finishes up the last bit of her empanada as the movie starts up. Schneider comes back over to her and hands her a spoon before sitting down next to her with a pint of frozen yogurt.

They watch the movie for a few minutes and she’s about to say that this really is the best Friday night she’s had in months when Schneider starts to talk.

“My mom took me to see this movie for my ninth birthday,” he says quietly. “She and father had gotten divorced two years before and she traveled a lot – you know, for work – so I didn’t really get to see her that often. But when I was a kid, she and I always had a movie date to celebrate my birthday.” He adjusts his glasses, then glances over at her. “Luckily, I was born in June, so there was always something good out. Can you imagine what it would’ve been like if I’d been born in January when all the bad movies come out?” He shudders, then takes a big bite of frozen yogurt. “She’d always pick me up early and we’d go out for breakfast, then we’d watch the first showing. I always liked it because there weren’t many people in the theater. I mean, we had a theater room at home, but there was something special about actually going to the movies.”

“Is that why you guys went early? So that you could have the theater to yourselves?”

He shakes his head.

“Father always planned a formal dinner party for my birthday, so mom had to have me back by 3 so I could get ready in time to greet the guests.” He taps his fingers on the mostly empty pint of frozen yogurt. “Me and mom would get out of the movie, get cake and ice cream, she’d sing happy birthday to me and then take me home.”

She tries to picture it – an eight year old Schneider hopped up on cake and movie snacks, his mother dropping him off in front of a dreary castle with a sour faced butler waiting at the door. She’s pretty sure that his father’s mansion doesn’t look like Dracula’s castle, but she can’t shake the image from her mind.

“Which one was your favorite?” She asks, mostly to distract herself from her ridiculous line of thinking.

“Birthday?”

She nods.

Schneider pushes his glasses up, then turns and puts his arm along the back of the couch.

“One year, father was away on business, so mom didn’t need to bring me back by a certain time.” He smiles brightly at the memory. “So we just stayed at the movie theater and I got to see  _Ghostbusters II, Batman, and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids_  all in one day.” He clears his throat. “I mean, I had nightmares for  _weeks_  after watching  _Batman_ , but it was all worth it.”

It goes on like that for the next hour or so – her asking questions, him talking softly about his mom. She learns that his mom enrolled him in art class and piano and tap; that her office had an entire wall dedicated to the paintings that he’d give her; that her visits became less frequent after she got married when he was ten.

He mentions a car accident he’d gotten in with his mom on his twelfth birthday – nothing major, he assures her, barely enough to dent the car.  

“But father was livid. And he also has the best lawyers.” He crosses his arms in front of him and shrugs. “So after that, I only saw her once a year. Then not at all, really, the older that I got.”  

It makes her ache – how much he obviously loved his mom, how often he’d been forgotten or left behind. It makes her angry too – because even if she knows that relationships are complicated, and even if what little she knows about Schneider’s father convinces her that he probably wasn’t exactly generous with parenting time after the divorce, the fact of the matter is this: once Schneider turned 18, there should’ve been nothing stopping his mother from having a relationship with him.

But instead, he’d turned 18 and had been sent away again – this after a lifetime of being sent away or set aside, a childhood of being rejected and ignored by the two people who should’ve spent their lives doing the exact opposite.

And now here they are, flying to attend a funeral for a woman who hadn’t even ever bothered to tell her son that she’d gotten sick.

He speaks less and less the closer they get to Vancouver, like he’s slowly disappearing into himself the closer they get to his hometown. She doesn’t try to force him to say anything, just leans into him, her back pressed against his chest as they both sit and watch the end of  _The Goonies_  is silence.

When the pilot comes on the intercom and tells them to expect turbulence as they begin their descent, he takes her hand. She’s not sure if it’s because he’s afraid of turbulence or his approaching hometown or the fact that he still hasn’t cried yet over the death of his mother.

It doesn’t matter. She just twines her fingers with his and decides that she won’t let go until he does.

* * *

There’s a driver at waiting for them on the tarmac.  
  
She’s not expecting it, although in hindsight she guesses she should’ve. Honestly, she was still kind of expecting to have to walk through the airplane terminal, winding their way across crowds of people, but of course there’s none of that inconvenience when you disembark from a private plane.

Instead, there’s a somber man in a suit waiting from them a little ways away from the plane who Schneider waves at from the top of the stairs.

He squeezes her hand and goes ahead of her down the narrow steps, stopping at the bottom to button up his coat with one hand and turn up his coat collar against the fine mist of rain that’s coming down. When he’s done, he reaches out to help her down the last few steps with the other.

It seems totally and completely unnecessary – she can walk down stairs by herself – and she’s about to say exactly that when she slips on the last step and basically launches himself into his arms by accident.

He steadies her, his hands firm on either side of her. The corner of his mouth quirks up slightly.

“Welcome to Raincouver, Pen,” he says, glancing over her to make sure she’s ok before reaching down to hold her hand.

She thinks it might be for her benefit – the ground is slick and her boots don’t exactly have the best traction – but she also notices that Schneider’s expression has dipped back down to a kind of blank sadness and thinks it might be for his instead.

Either way, she makes sure to hold on tightly to him.

A gust of wind sweeps the tarmac and she curses out loud at how cold it is.

He looks down at her, a flicker of amusement in his eyes.

“You ok?”

“Yeah, I just – .” She shivers in a way that she could probably call violent. “January in Vancouver and January in Los Angeles are two very different things.”

The amusement vanishes completely, replaced by a deep set frown.

“Is that the only coat that you brought?”

She nods.

“Yeah, but it’s fine. We aren’t here very long.”

He makes a humming sound in the back of his throat and pulls her close to him, squeezing her hand once before letting go and wrapping his arm around her shoulders instead. He speeds up his pace and she has to almost do double steps just to keep up with him. She doesn’t mind, though – it keeps her warm and the minute they get to the car, he opens the door and bundles her up inside.

“There’s water and ginger ale in the drinks cooler,” he says, pointing to the center console that separates the backseat. He leans over and turns up the heat, then smiles at her and closes the door.

“What the hell is a drinks cooler – .” She glances at the console, which has two glass bottles of water and two expensive looking bottles of ginger ale in it. “Ah, ok, it’s exactly what he says it is.”

It’s by far the nicest car she’s ever been in, all leather and luxurious in the way you see in movies. She saw walking up to it that it’s a Bentley and she’s tempted to look up how much it costs on her phone just so she can – well, probably feel a little bit nauseated. She decides against it and just pours herself a glass of ginger ale instead.

She takes a long drink and looks at the glass in wonder.

“Damn, that’s good ginger ale.”

The door opens and Schneider sits down next to her with droplets of water on his glasses. He takes off his glasses and wiping them off before looking at her.

“You warm enough?”

She nods as their driver settles into the driver seat.

“Ready to go Mr. Schneider?”

Schneider winces.

“Just Schneider is fine, Silis.” He clears his throat and nods in her direction. “Silis, this is Penelope. Penelope, this is Silis – he’ll be our driver for the weekend.”

She sets her glass down and leans over with her hand out.

“Nice to meet you, Silis.”

He looks surprised for a moment, then smiles and shakes her hand.

“Likewise, Penelope.” He turns back around and starts the car, and it’s so quiet and so smooth that only the fact that the scenery is changing tells her that they’re actually moving.

She’s about to mention that very fact to Schneider when she looks over and sees him staring moodily out the window. It’s unfamiliar to the point that it feels almost wrong. Not wrong that he’s doing it – God knows that if anyone has the right stare out into the rainy night sky moodily right now, it’s Schneider – but that there must be something seriously wrong with the world for Schneider to be doing it in the first place.

Because even if she makes fun of him for it, and even if it is sometimes genuinely irritating to her, one of the things she likes best about Schneider is the fact that he is so unfailingly upbeat. She used to chalk it up to the fact that he’d lived such a privileged life. But lately – and especially now – she thinks that that line of thinking really isn’t fair to him at all.

Because yes, there’s something to be said for the fact that he can fly off on a private plane at the drop of a hat, that he can rent a car for a weekend that probably costs more than her entire month’s rent. But what she can also say about his life is this: that he’d had a lonely childhood and long series of distant parents who were all either unsupportive, neglectful or absent altogether.

She appreciates now in a way that she never really has before how nearly miraculous it is that  he managed to become someone who is both relentlessly loving and completely loyal.

She reaches over and touches his hand, sees him blink and shake his head as though banishing whatever thoughts are currently clouding his head. He shifts his palm and intertwines their fingers together, glancing over at her from the corner of his eye and only relaxing when she smiles at him.

He smiles back, then leans against the leather seat back and starts making small talk with Silis.

She half listens to it – learns that Silis has been with the company for five years, has driven Schneider’s father a half-dozen times, has a wife and three kids a home. It makes her smile – the way that Schneider makes sure to treat Silis like he’s more than just an accessory, the way he sounds genuinely interested probably – she thinks – because he is. That’s just the type of person he is.

As they’re talking, she takes a look at the ridiculously plush interior and thinks about how she’ll explain it to her mom and Alex and Elena when she Skypes them at the hotel. Thinks about how abnormal this whole experience is.  

(Some other, more distant part of her thinks about how normal it’s already become to be beside him and hold his hand.)

She thinks that in some different timeline, one where they weren’t in Vancouver for his mother’s funeral, they’d argue over how they’d get to their hotel. She’d want to take the train, he’d want to take a taxi. Eventually, she thinks, they’d compromise. They’d take a train to where they were going, and she’d cave and say yes to a taxi on the way back. After all, she’s not made of stone – she likes saving money, but she also likes convenience.

Of course, this begs the question of: why would they be in Vancouver together in the first place? What reason other than tragedy would they have to explore his hometown?

She doesn’t have an answer to that, but as they drive from the airport to the hotel they’re staying, she thinks: she wouldn’t mind living in that different timeline. 

* * *

“You gonna be ok?” She asks on the elevator up to their floor.

He looks over at her and nods.

“Yeah, I’ll be ok. I’ll probably order room service and then watch some 80’s movie until I fall asleep.” He clears his throat and looks back at the closed metal door in front of him. “That’s what I did last night.”

“How’d you sleep?”

He shrugs.

“I didn’t really.” He sees the look on her face and gives her a lopsided grin. “It’s fine – I watched all three Back to the Futures and almost bought a used Delorean.”

“I just –.” She reaches for his hand and squeezes it. “I’m not really sure that counts as fine.”

“Nah, it does. If I wasn’t fine, I would’ve actually bought the Delorean.”

She looks up at him and chews on the corner of her lip.

She hates to think of him all alone the night before his mother’s funeral, watching childhood movies because they’re the only real memories he has of her, so she turns towards him and intertwines both sets of fingers with his.

“Well, if you don’t mind waiting a bit, I’ll check in with Alex and Elena and my mom and then I’ll come to your room – we’ll order room service and watch movies until we’re both ready to fall asleep.”

He grins at her.

“Alright, I can dig it.”

“Yeah?” She smiles up at him.

“Yeah!” He lets go of one of her hands to adjust his glasses, but keeps a tight hold on the other. “I mean, I haven’t had slumber party where we keep all our clothes on and there’s no butler around since –.” He purses his lips and raises his eyebrows at her. “Well, I’ve never had one.”

She laughs, mostly out of relief at the fact that it’s the first truly Schneider-sounding thing he’s said since they left Los Angeles.  

“You and I have lived very different lives, Schneider.”

He looks down at her and gives her a small, earnest smile.

“Yeah. But I’m glad you’re in mine, now.”

She smiles and leans into him, cups their intertwined hands with her free one.

“Me too.” 

* * *

Her Skype call with her family actually takes a good fifteen minutes longer than she’d meant for it to, mostly because Alex and her mother insist on doing a detailed walkthrough of her room – which is less a room and more of a large apartment. She thinks it might actually be bigger than their own apartment in LA.

“That’s a lot of money he’s spending,” Elena mentions after she finishes telling them about the full-sized soaps and toiletries in the bathroom.

“Yeah, I know,” she says, combing her hand through her hair. “And normally I wouldn’t want him to spend all this money on me, but I just want to support him however I can and I feel like getting in a fight about money isn’t the way to do that.”

“Ay, si, Lupita,” her mother says, “spending money is how Schneider shows his appreciation. It is something that he learned from his papi.”

She shakes her head.

“I mean, that is something that needs to be addressed just – you know – not the weekend of his mother’s funeral.”

“And I mean, you’re living large, mami!” Alex says, eyes wide with incredulity. “Live it up!”

“Ay, papito, I’m not here to live it up. I’m here to support Schneider.”

“How is he doing, by the way?” Elena asks.

She sighs.

“He’s – well, he’s like Schneider, but sadder and quieter.”

Elena draws her eyebrows together.

“So what you’re saying is he’s not acting like Schneider at all.”

She sighs again.

“No, I guess he’s not. But he’s allowed to be – his mom just died.” She checks the time. “Look, I love you all so much, but Schneider and I are going to have dinner and then watch movies, and I’ve already made him wait almost twenty minutes longer than I meant to.”

She gives a kiss to the screen and smiles at the chorus of I love you’s. Before she clicks off the app, Elena comes back onto the screen.

“And hey mom?”

“What’s up?”

“Give Schneider our love, too, ok?”

She smiles at Elena and nods.

“Of course, baby.”   

* * *

“I don’t know what they put in this burger, but it has ruined any other burger for me forever.”

He grins at her from where he’s sitting on the other side of the bed.

“We’ll come back the next time you’re craving one.”

She points a fry at him.

“Honestly, I would just to eat this burger again.”

She’s sitting cross-legged on his massive california king-sized bed, a tray of food in front of her while Schneider looks through the list of films. The stack of candy and soda on the nightstand next to her is probably big enough to feed her entire family, but she’s willing to give it a go on her own. There’s also a paper bag of what smells and looks to be –

“Hey, I didn’t see kettle corn on the menu,” she says, opening it up and smelling the salty sweetness.

Schneider sets his tray down on floor next to him and scoots in to the halfway point of the bed, which means he’s still about an arm’s length away from her.

“There wasn’t, but you said you wanted it, so I asked them to go out and get some for us.”  

She bites her lip to keep from saying something like, you really didn’t need to do that; instead, just smiles and asks him what movie they’re gonna watch.

“So, it’s either The Neverending Story or Beetlejuice,” he says, flicking between the two movies on the screen.

“Uh, you really wanna watch Beetlejuice before going to bed?

He glances up at the still image of Michael Keatons’ unhinged stare on the screen.

“Yeah, good point.” 

* * *

She makes it all the way through The Neverending Story, but somewhere during The Princess Bride she rests her head on his shoulder and ends up waking up to the sound of his voice.

“Hey, Pen,” she hears him say quietly, his voice close to her ear. “You wanna lay down?”

She raises her head groggily from his shoulder and instinctively rubbing her fingers up the side of it. She feels like she’s just fallen asleep, but the crick in her neck and the fact that Wesley is now dead on the screen tells her differently.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she says, trying to blink the sleep away from her eyes.

“It’s fine, I just was worried about your neck,” he says, rotating his shoulder slightly. She raises an eyebrow at the movement and glances up at him. The corner of his mouth lifts. “And my shoulder might’ve been going a little bit numb.”

She stretches her hands above her head, her head still clouded with sleep, then reaches over and gently massages his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

He clears his throat and rests his hand on top of hers, stilling her movements on his shoulder.

“It’s fine, Pen.” His voice sounds a little strained, and she wonders just how long she’s been resting her head on his shoulder. Maybe she accidentally made him tweak it a little. He squeezes her hand. “Wanna keep watching the movie?”

She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Are you sleepy?”

He shakes his head.  

“Not really.”

She nods slowly, then gestures towards the door.

“Uh, do you want me to go?”

“No.”

He says it quickly, without a hint of hesitation. Then, he clears his throat and chews on his bottom lip. “But, I mean, I totally get it – I mean, you don’t have to – um – if you want – .”

“Hey,” she says, interrupting him. “What did I say? I’m here for whatever you need.”

That includes staying up for at least another movie and a half even though she’s having trouble keeping him in focus right now. She could really use a cup of her mami’s coffee.

Schneider tilts his head in her direction.

  
“You’re sleepy though, right?”

“Yeah, but – I don’t have to be.” She stifles a yawn, then smiles brightly. “See? I’m fine.”

He shakes his head.

“Pen, you should go to sleep.”

“Not until you do.” She sighs, then softens her voice. “You have to get some sleep Schneider.”

He shakes his head again.

“I don’t want to keep you up.”

“Well, I don’t want to leave you alone.”

He gives her a long, inscrutable look that she meets with one of her own – one that says, I have way more practice at staring contest than you do and I’m going to win this one.

Finally, he nods, then takes a deep breath.  

“Uh, then how about this.” He slides down onto the bed and holds his arm out. She looks at him, the expression on his face apprehensive, but still that same wide-eyed look of guilelessness she’s used to seeing from him. She think it might be the flickering of the TV in the darkened room, but she swears she catches something that looks almost tender in his bright blue eyes.

For some reason, it makes her want to smile.

She doesn’t, because then she’ll have to think about why that makes her smile, and then she’ll have to keep thinking about the fact that they’re laying down together in his bed, in a darkened room, and how weird that both is and isn’t.

She’s too tired to think about any of those things, so before she can follow that line of thinking too much, she slides down next to him and settles her head on his shoulder, her hands tucked underneath her head. Her head is at an angle where if she wanted to, she could watch the movie. In fact, she fully intends on doing so, except that the moment she gets comfortable again, her eyes almost immediately close again.

They’re both quiet for a moment, the only sound the indistinct murmur of the movie.

Then, she feels his arm come up and rest across the length of her upper back, his fingertips warm against her shoulder.

“Thanks for staying, Pen. I really – it means a lot to me.”

“Yeah, of course Schneider.” She moves one hand out from underneath her hand and drapes her arm across his chest. “I got you.”

He sighs, and she feels him press his cheek into her hair.

“Yeah?” The word barely louder than a whisper.

She nods into chest.

“Always, Schneider.”

He doesn’t say anything, just lightly brushes his fingertips up and down the length of her arm. The movement is so soft, so comforting, that she can feel sleep pulling her under again. Before she drifts off completely, she thinks feels a small, soft pressure against the top her head – as if Schneider has just dropped a kiss into her hairline.

But maybe it’s just a dream.


	4. Chapter 4

She wakes up again when Schneider bolts up in bed.

She’s groggy and disoriented and a peek at the bedside clock shows that it’s just after 4 am.

Schneider’s sitting up in bed next to her, his legs bent, hands on his knees. His head is bowed, so she can’t see the expression on his face. But even without looking and even though he hasn’t said anything, she can see by the tightness in his shoulders and the deep breaths he’s taking in that he’s just woken up from a nightmare.  

She shifts forward and puts her hand on his back. His breathing stutters slightly when she does, but she takes it as a good sign that he doesn’t throw her off. Instead, he edges back towards her, his breathing slowing down as she starts to rub small circles into his back.

“You’re ok,” she murmurs, repeating it over and over again as she moves closer to him.

When she gets close enough that her shoulder is flush against his, she wraps her arms around him. She’s pressed up against his back, her cheek resting against his shoulder – is close enough to feel his heart beating in his chest.

He takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly. His head dips forward as his hands come up and grip hers where they’re resting on his chest.

They stay like that for a long, steady moment – her arms around him, his fingers tangled in hers, his breathing slowly steadying to match hers.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” he finally says, his voice rough with sleep and sadness and some other emotion she can’t quite figure out.

She tightens her arms around him.

“Don’t be.” She squeezes his hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head.

“Ok,” she says quietly, untangling one of her hands from his and running it gently through his hair. It’s newly washed and soft – without any product or styling, the ends of it curling in a way she’s never been able to see before. If this were any other moment in time, she’d tell him that he should keep it this way more often.

Then again, if it were any other moment in time, she wouldn’t be seeing it like this at all.

Schneider’s quiet sigh brings her out of her musing.

“How can I help?” She asks, lightly scraping her fingernails over his scalp. “What do you need?”

He takes a deep breath and rubs his cheek against where her hand is resting against his chest.

“Can you…can you keep doing that?” He pauses, then take a sharp intake of breath as though steeling himself. “And can I…can I just hold you?” His voice is small and sad and so very lost sounding that she thinks she’d say yes to just about anything he’d ask of her right now. He clears his throat. “I just – I feel – .” He blows out a breath. “Never mind, it’s stupid. Forget I asked.”

She shakes her head before she realizes he can’t see her because he’s still turned away.

“No, it’s not stupid Schneider.” She quickly lays back down before she over thinks what she’s doing, then tugs on his shirt and waits until he looks over at her. “Lay down and put your head here,” she points to her abdomen. When he doesn’t move, she pulls on his shirt again. “C’mon, Schneider.”

He gives her a long look, then swallows before he slowly nods.

He braces his arms on the bed and pushes forward a little bit, then lowers himself and rests his head on her lower abdomen, his arm draped across her.

“Is this ok? Are you comfortable?”

“Yeah,” she says, ignoring how weirdly intimate  this is, and – even more than that – how weird this whole thing isn’t. She threads her hand through his hair to distract herself – a gesture which both accomplishes what she wants and makes it worse at the same time. Still, she immediately feels his shoulders relax, so it at least did one thing she wanted it to do.

She runs her fingers through his hair, combing through his curls, gently untangling the strands. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just sighs and reaches up to thread his fingers with her other hand.  

“I was in a crowded theater and I was looking for my mom,” he finally says, his voice loud in the dark quiet of the room. She’s confused for a moment – he’s talking like they’re picking up on some thread of conversation they’ve been having even though it’s been nothing but the sound of their breathing and her hands running through his hair for the last ten or so minutes. Then it dawns on her – his dream. She doesn’t say anything, just continues running her hand through his hair, gentle and slow. 

“I was running down the hall, going into theater after theater, looking for her because I knew that if I could find her in time, I could stop her from getting sick.” He sighs. “I don’t know how I knew that – dream logic, I guess. But all I knew…I just knew that I had to find her.” He stops and is quiet for so long she wonders if he fell back asleep. 

Just as she’s about to shift over and check, he starts speaking again, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “So I’m running through all these theaters and I can’t find her, so I go back to the lobby and I look out into the crowd and suddenly I…suddenly I just know, in the same way that I know that if I found her I’d stop her from getting sick…I realize…” He trails off, and she can feel him swallow thickly through her shirt.

She rubs the back of his neck and gently scratches at the short hair there.

“What did you realize?” She asks softly, brushing the backs of her fingers across his cheek and up his jawline, then running her fingers through his hair. “Schneider?”

He takes a deep breath.

“I realized that I wasn’t gonna be able to find her because I didn’t know what she looked like any more.” She feels his jaw working through her shirt and her heart aches for him – at the sadness in his voice, the helplessness in it. “And I just remember…” He blows out a harsh breath and shakes his head. “I remember looking out into this crowd of people and thinking – she’s here, I  _know_  she’s here, I should be able to find her. Any one of these people could be here. But I won’t be able to save her because I don’t know what she looks like or who she is.”

He makes a hollow sound that could either be a bitter laugh or a strangled sigh.

“You know there were times, even as a kid, where it felt like she was looking at me, but she wasn’t really seeing me.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Sometimes we’d be at lunch or at a movie or she’d be watching me play at the playground, but she wasn’t really there. Her body was, but she was somewhere else, like – like she was a thousand miles away from me.”

He rubs his cheek against her shirt, his next words half buried in the fabric of it.

“What is it about me, do you think, that makes me difficult to love?” Then, in a small, sad, quiet voice he asks –

“Why didn’t she love me?”

She forces back the lump that’s formed in her throat and untangles the hand that’s holding is so she can brush her fingers across his cheek, then tips his head up so his eyes can meet hers.

“Her not loving you has nothing to do with you, Schneider. That’s all on her.” She cups his face in her hand. “Because you know what I know? I know that it isn’t hard to love you. And I know that because me and my mom and Alex and Elena – and basically that whole damn building – we all love you.” She brushes her thumb across his cheekbone. “And no matter what ridiculous or irritating or bizarre things you do, we still and will always love you. Honestly, I can’t imagine what our lives would be like without you. Why do you think we let you hang around so much?”

He smile ghosts across his lips.

“Because I have 30 keys to your apartment and you can’t exactly keep me out of it?”  

She huffs a laugh, though mostly out of relief that she’s at least made him feel good enough to attempt a joke.

“Well, 30 seems a little bit like overkill.” She skims her fingertips across his forehead, pushes his hair back from his eyes. “But no – it’s because we want you in our lives. It’s because we love you.” She traces a path up his jawline with her fingertips and some distant part of her is asking why she’s so intent on apparently touching every part of his face. She silences that voice by trying to convince herself that she’s simply trying to comfort Schneider and – by the looks of his expression – is succeeding. “Schneider, I’m sorry that your mom was…that she made you feel like it’s hard to love you. But it isn’t. It really,  _really_ isn’t at all.” She cups his face in her hand. “Do you believe me?”

He sighs, his eyes closing momentarily and his face turning into her hand for a moment before he opens his eyes again and nods.

“I do.” 

* * *

She wakes up to the low sounds of conversation followed by the dull click of a door closing.

She rolls over and reaches over, feels the other side of the bed is cool and empty before she blearily opens one eye. She takes a quick glance around the bedroom and sees that Schneider isn’t in it.

“Schneider?”

She hears the clattering of a cup being set down onto a table, then his quiet footsteps walking back to the bedroom.

“Hey,” he says softly, bending down so that his face is in her eye line. “Sorry – did the noise wake you up?”

She shakes her head.

“How long have you been up?”

He sits down next to her on the bed, folding his long legs and looping his arms around them.

“A couple of hours.”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“You should’ve woken me up.” She blinks a few times to try and get her eyes in focus, reaches up to push a wild curl away from her face so she can actually meet his eyes clearly instead of through a curtain of hair.

Unfortunately, her hair doesn’t want to cooperate – it just falls back down over her eyes again.

She’s about to reach up again when Schneider sits down on the bed and leans over to brush her hair away from her face, tucking the curl behind her ear and running his hand over it a few times to make it stay.

She sighs and tries not to lean into his hand. She doesn’t think she succeeds very well.

He gives her a small smile, and there’s definitely something tender about it lingering at the edges.

“Nah – you needed sleep. And we don’t have to be anywhere for another four hours.” He moves his hand away from her face, though she feels a featherlight touch of his fingertips linger on the edges of her cheek as he does. “I can wake you up in another two hours if you want to go back to bed.”

She must still be half-asleep because she very nearly says _not unless you’re here with me_ – which, what the  _hell_ , where did that thought even come from? She shakes her head to clear that thought from it, then pushes herself up into a seated position.

“If you’re up, then I’m up,” she says, stretching her arms up above her head. “Although I wouldn’t say no to some coffee.”

He nods and stands up before flourishing a bow.

“As you wish,” he says grandly before disappearing into the next room. She hears the clattering of dishware and a moment later, Schneider appears in the doorway with a giant silver tray that has a fancy coffee pot, two cups and a huge assortment of pastries on it.  

He puts it down on the edge of the bed and pours her a cup.

“We could’ve drank it out there, you know,” she says, taking the cup from him and taking a big gulp. It may her not be mami’s coffee but damn if it isn’t the single best cup of non-cafecito coffee she’s ever had.

“And miss the opportunity to have breakfast in bed?” He asks, pouring his own cup and settling next to her. “C’mon Pen, what’s the point of a slumber party if you don’t have breakfast in bed?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a slumber party that included breakfast in bed.”

He tilts his head at her.

“Like, ever?”

She starts to shake her head, then stops.

“Well, not if you don’t count the time my mom fell asleep with me in my bed because she was taking care of me, and then brought breakfast to me because I was too sick to make it to the kitchen.”

“I do not count that,” he says, shaking his head. He looks at the tray pensively before he glances over at her, then pulls the tray towards them. “So, I guess here’s your chance.” He looks critically at the spread like it’s personally offended him. “There’s not really that much on there – I can order more.”

She looks at him to make sure that he isn’t being sarcastic and, when she realizes he isn’t, gestures at the tray.

“Schneider, there are at least enough pastries on here to open a bakeshop with.”

“Maybe one of those small, airport bakeshops.” He points to two separate plates. “Those are mini-scones instead of full-sized ones and there are only three types of danishes. And there’s only one type of quiche!”

“Yes, how will we survive?” She says with a drawl. She takes a sip of her coffee, then nudges him with her shoulder. “It’s fine, Schneider. If the rest of the food and this coffee are anything to go by, they’ll probably all be the best pastries I’ve ever had in my life.”

* * *

It’s one quiche, one orange cinnamon roll and two different types of scones later that she officially declares that, yes, these are in fact the best pastries she’s ever had.

“Seriously, is the chef available for me to me meet? And, I don’t know, maybe to marry?”

Schneider scoffs and shakes his head.

“It’s probably more like a team of cooks, so you’d probably have to marry more than one person.”

“For those scones? I could be down with it.” She grins at him, then shakes her head. “Although it’s way too cold here, so I’d have to convince everyone to move to LA.”

“Speaking of –.” Schneider says, then abruptly gets up and walks out of the room.

She stares at the doorway, confused, listening to the sound of doors opening and closing and Schneider shuffling around the front room. She’s about to get out of the bed when he reappears in the doorway holding a coat.

“What’s that?”

He walks over to her and holds it up for her to look at before handing it over to her.

“It’s yours.” He takes in the confused look on her face and shrugs. “I had them run out and get you a raincoat that was also gonna keep you warm.” When she doesn’t say anything, a deep furrow appears between his eyebrows. “Do you not like it? Because I can have them get another one – I just thought this one would –.”

She puts her hands out in front of her and shakes her head.

“No, no, I love it. It’s perfect – it’s one I would’ve picked out myself.” She glances at the tag and feels her eyes widen in surprise. “Except I wouldn’t because this is from Kate Spade – Schneider, you didn’t have to do this.”

He shrugs, then sits back down on the bed.

“I know, but I wanted to.” He glances at the coat then back up at her. “I didn’t want you to be cold or get rained on.”

“We’re only here for a day.”

“I know, but – Pen.” He sighs. “I just know all of this is such a hassle and I feel so bad for bothering you like this. I mean, I sprung this trip on you last minute, at the worst time of the year to come here. And I made you leave your family behind on a three-day weekend, and then kept you up all night because I – .”

She puts the coat behind her, moves over to where he’s sitting and hugs him. He obviously isn’t expecting it because he’s still half-turned away from her, his arms pinned to his sides. But he immediately stops speaking and reaches up to wrap his fingers around her wrists and leans his head against hers.

She squeezes him tightly before letting go, then shifts back so that she can look him in the eye. He looks uncertain and unsteady and a little bit bewildered, so she reaches over and takes both his hands in hers.

“Schneider, yesterday you took me on a private plane to your hometown, rented the nicest car that I may ever see in my lifetime, then had me sleep in the softest bed in – probably – all of existence. Today, I just had the best cup of coffee in my life and you just bought me what will forever be the nicest single item of clothing I own. There is not one part of any of that is even close to approaching a hassle.” She runs her thumb over the ridges of his knuckles and smiles at him. “And you  _know_  that I love my mom and Alex and Elena, but I also sometimes love being away from them. And the fact that I get to do that while supporting you and letting you know how important you are to me – that’s the opposite of a hassle. That’s something I’m lucky to be able to do.” She lets go of his hand and reaches up to rest her palm on his cheek. “So no more of this ‘all of this is such a hassle’ talk. I’m here for you, whatever you need, and I’m glad to do it.” She curls her fingers slightly, brushing the backs of them against the roughness of his beard before flattening them out to cup his face once more. “Got it?”

He looks at her intently for a long moment before he reaches up and covers her hand with his, leans into it slightly and sighs. Then, he smiles at her and nods.

“Got it.” 

* * *

There’s still a little over three hours left until they have to leave and she knows she should probably head back to her room, maybe take a little nap and then slowly start to get ready.

Except that she doesn’t want that really. Or, you know, at all.

What she actually wants is to stay with Schneider and talk to him, because their conversation has just gone from a listing of his favorite pastries, to the difference between macarons and macaroons, to his favorite non-birthday related memory of his mother that involved an entire day of trying to find the best macaroons in Vancouver.

And, yeah, part of her wanting to stay is that she wants to make sure he’s ok, because she’s seen his expression shift from bright to bitter to back to sad and she knows that what he needs more than anything right now is the knowledge that he isn’t alone.

But if she’s really being honest, she mostly wants to stay for no other reason than that she likes being around him. It shouldn’t be as weird as it is to her – she means it when she calls him her best friend. Except that as much as that’s true, she can’t ever recall a time where the two of them just spent time together, hanging out just for the hell of it.

Most of their shared time is out of necessity or the in-between snippets as they’re waiting on something else to begin. Even most of this weekend could fall under the umbrella of time spent together out of necessity – the plane ride, the movie last night, even their breakfast here together.

But now that that’s all out of the way, there’s really no reason for her to stay in his room.

Except that she wants to.

So instead of thinking too much about that or why or  _if it even matters_ , she takes a sip of coffee and smiles at him.

She can tell that it catches him off-guard, but then he immediately smiles back at her. Because even when he’s sad and tired and little bit lost, Schneider is still type of person who will reflect back whatever bit of happiness you have to offer him.

She really likes that about him.

“You know what’s weird?” She asks, mostly because she’s been sitting there, staring and smiling at him for just a little too long.

He cocks his head to the side and just waits for her to continue, and she thinks that that gesture more than anything communicates just how out of it he’s feeling. Because normally she knows that he would’ve responded to that question with some ridiculous line of thinking or obscure piece of trivia. She knows this because it’s the kind of thing that used to be annoying to her about him, but that she now categorizes as endearing in her head.

When the hell did  _that_  happen?

She clears her throat and gestures at the space between the two of them.

“It’s weird that we’ve never really hung out before – just the two of us.”

He squints at her.

“We hang out all the time.”

She shakes her head.

“No, I ask you for advice all the time and you help me, or you’re at my apartment and I’m also there.” She rests her hand on his knee. “But it’s never just the two of us, spending time together, just to…you know, spend time together.” She shrugs. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

He stares at her hand on his knee, then looks up at her.

“You’d want to? Spend time together, just the two of us?”

“Well, yeah.” She taps her fingers against his knee, then shrugs. “We’re best friends, right?”

He nods. Then, he rests his hand lightly on top of hers.  

“Then we should hang out – just the two of us – when we get back to LA.”

“What about right now?” She turns her hand over so that she’s holding his, as though best friends just always hold hands and not because some part of her misses the feel of his hand in hers. “We still have a few hours ‘til we have to start getting ready, so –.” She squeezes his hand and smiles at him.

He blinks rapidly, a smile slowly relaxing the lines of his face.

“Wanna watch another movie with me? That’s what I was gonna do for the next few hours.” He grabs the remote with his other hand and turns on the tv to the opening screen of E.T. He glances over at her. “I know it’s a little obvious – movie about someone who just wants to go home.”

She furrows her brow at him.

“You are home, though.”

He blows out a harsh breath.

“Nah.” He clears his throat. “It’s been a long time since this place felt like home to me.” He shrugs. “Now it’s just somewhere I used to live.” He looks at her and gives her a small smile. “The apartment is more of a home than Vancouver ever was, anyway.”

She smiles at him, then scoots back until she’s sitting next to him, close enough that her arm is pressed up against his. He shifts his hand slightly under hers, twining their fingers together.

They stay like that for a long, quiet moment as they watch the movie. After a few minutes, she yawns, then rests her head on his shoulder.

“You tired?”

She stifles another yawn.

“A little bit. I don’t know why – this bed is super comfortable.”

He squeezes her hand.

“Probably because some jerk woke you up in the middle of the night because he had a nightmare and you had to calm him down.”

“Hey!” She lifts her head from his shoulder and mock glares at him. “Watch what you say about that guy. He’s important to me.”

He grins widely at that, the shape of it making her feel warm and tender towards him.

She yawns again, effectively stopping her from having to think too much about whatever those inopportune feelings are all about right now, thank God, and scrubs her hand across her eyes.

“I think I’m gonna lay down,” she says, running her hand through her hair.

“Do you – uh –.” He looks away from a moment and clears his throat before looking back over at her. “Want to lay down…with – uh – me?” And there’s something about the way he says it that makes it seem like he’s nervous which, quite frankly, is a little bit adorable. She thinks it probably should be more awkward than it is – it’s one thing to cuddle up close in the darkness of the night or in the aftermath of a nightmare; it’s another thing entirely to do it in the bright daylight of 9 a.m. after breakfast.

But the thing is – she doesn’t really feel awkward at all. Just – well – affectionate and warm and comfortable.

In fact, she’s suddenly and inexplicably struck by the desire to brush the strand of hair that’s fallen across his eyes back from his forehead, and she has to literally tangle her free hand in the sheets to stop herself from doing so. She’s grateful when, in the next moment, he drops down onto his back and holds his arm out so that she can settle her head on his shoulder.

She shifts so her arm is curled up underneath her, the other thrown across his chest casually. And it’s weird – how the act of it both is and isn’t casual; how this whole weekend so far has felt both new and familiar in a way that should freak her out but doesn’t.

“You make a surprisingly comfortable pillow,” she says in an effort to distract herself from that line of thinking. There’ll be time to figure out what that all might mean, but whenever it might be, it’s not now.

She feels him chuckle.

“Glad I’m good for something.”

She reaches up and hits him square in the chest, her hand making a loud thwaping sound against his sternum.

“Stop it. There’s a lot you’re good at.”

She almost cringes as she says it because it leaves her open to just the kind of innuendo Shneider likes to make and, to be fair, she practically gave that one to him.

He doesn’t take it though; instead, he just takes her hand from where it’s resting on his chest and wraps it in his.

“Like what?” He asks, earnest and hopeful and heartbreaking all at once.

She turns her hand over so that she can thread her fingers through his, presses each one of her fingertips into his skin as she lists off all the ways he’s a good man.

“Making my mom laugh. Supporting Alex with baseball. Teaching Elena to be a handyman. Fixing everything in our house that Elena can’t figure out yet. Taking care of everyone the building.” She lets go of his hand, shifts in bed so that she can put both her hands on top of his chest and rest her head on them so that she can meet his eyes. “Taking care of me,” she finishes up softly with a warm smile.  

He gives her a long, steady look.

“All that’s easy,” he says quietly, then reaches up to brush his fingertips along the slope of her cheek and tucks a wayward curl behind her ear. “Especially that last one.”

She swallows, gives him a look she hopes is teasing and not whatever complicated mix of emotions she’s desperately trying to ignore right now.

“What, so you like being woken up in the middle of the night talk about my problems?”

She’s never wanted so desperately for him to make some snarky comment or bad joke or ridiculous observation, just so he can diffuse the tension of the moment.

He doesn’t though. He just looks at her – fondness and tenderness and a simmering kind of warmth reflected in his clear blue eyes.

“If it’s you, yes.”

Her breath catches in her throat a bit, and she finds herself wanting to both lean closer to him and throw herself off the bed completely.

She doesn’t do either. Instead, she bites her lip painfully hard to focus her thinking. It works – for both of them, apparently. She winces in pain, and Schneider shakes his head slightly and breathes in sharply.

“And – uh – besides.” He clears his throat. “It’s been me needing your help in the middle of the night recently.” He worries the edge of his lip. “Honestly, Pen, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you these last few days.”

“You’d’ve been alright,” she says with a smile, somehow both relieved and disappointed that whatever moment they’ve just had has passed. “Elena just would’ve made you help her build an entire furniture set from old lumber.”  

A smile tugs at the corner of his lips.

“She’s not in an art class, is she?”

“Would you believe me if I said she was?”

He chuckles.

“Not after seeing her try to use an orbital sander.”

She grins at him.

“She’s not really that good at lying,” she says wryly. “But it comes from a good place – she’s trying to get better at letting you know that you’re important to her.”

Then, because she wants to and she can and because it no longer feels dangerous to do so, she reaches up and pushes back the thick curling strand of hair that’s fallen across his forehead.

“I am, too,” she says quietly, letting her fingertips drift down over his cheek before shifting in his arms so that she’s lying on his shoulder once again, her arm draped across his chest.

He sighs, and she feels his hand come up and rest on her arm, his fingers softly drifting across the skin of her shoulder.

“It’s really hard to imagine what this week would’ve been like without you guys. Or this weekend without you.” He drops his head down and rests his cheek on her head, and she can feel the warmth of his breath against her scalp. “I think I’m still a little in shock that you even said yes to coming here. Like I’m just gonna wake up and I’ll just be in this bed alone and the entire last 24 hours have been a really vivid acid trip. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.”

She shifts closer to him – is basically as close as she can be without laying directly on top of him – and tightens her arm around him.

“Is it really that surprising that I care about you that much?” She asks, tilting her head up so she can catch his eye.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“I think it might just be surprising that anyone cares about me this much.” He glances down at her. “Especially someone like you.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “No, not someone like you. You.” He licks his lips. “It – uh – it just kind of feels too good to be true. And I know it’s definitely more than I deserve.”

She lifts her head from his shoulder and looks down at him intently, a deep furrow between her eyebrows.

“Hey, that’s not true.” His gaze slides away from her, so she presses her fingers underneath his chin and tips his head so that he’s looking at her. “Schneider, that’s absolutely not true at all, you have to know that. It’s important to me that you know that.”    

“It’s, um.” He closes his eyes for a moment, then moves his hands so behind his head and looks straight up at the ceiling. “So there’s you – and you’re kicking ass as a single mom, raising these two amazing kids all while working full time and going to school to become an NP.” He glances at her. “And then there’s me – a guy who never  finished college, had to go to rehab six times to get clean, couldn’t even get his own mom to talk to him more than once a year.”

“None of that has anything to do with what you deserve.” He levels a skeptical look at her, which she returns with a shake of her head. “I’m serious, Schneider. So what if you didn’t finish college? It’s not for everyone and you’re doing fine without it. Those six times in rehab? That just means that you kept trying to overcome addiction no matter how hard it was and – guess what – these last seven years prove just how strong you are.”

She touches his face, gently mapping the edges of his jaw with her fingers until he turns his head and looks at her. “And maybe your mom didn’t realize how amazing you are, but I do.” She traces a line up his jawline with her thumb – a gesture she didn’t intend to make, but at this point it feels like her hands have a mind of their own. She doesn’t regret it though; can’t, really – not when leans into her touch but keeps his eyes focused intently on her, his expression hopeful and desperate and wanting all at once.

“You deserve this, Schneider. You deserve to have someone here with you. And now, you always will because I’m not going anywhere. Like, ever.” She smiles at him. “You’re pretty much stuck with me.” She flicks her eyes up to the wavy, soft strands of his hair because continuing to look at his face suddenly feels slightly dangerous. She moves her hand from his jaw so that she can run her fingers lightly through his hair. “So, I don’t want to hear that you don’t deserve this because you do. You absolutely, completely do. I know it and you should too, ok?”

He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, lets the air out slowly before opening his eyes again.

He reaches up and takes her hand from where it’s tangled in his hair and brings it down to his chest. He wraps his fingers around hers, his thumb grazing over the contours of her hand.

“So, I might not know anything about what I deserve, but I do know this –.” He presses a kiss against the back of her fingers, his lips warm against the ridges of her hand, then looks up at her. “I’m really lucky that you’re in my life.”  

She takes a deep, steadying breath. Has to, because the feel of his lips against her skin and the look in his eyes – open and tender and adoring in a way that’s almost reverent – makes her feel shaky and honest and –

Carefree, she thinks, trying to name the feeling coursing through her right now. Her eyes flick down to his lips and she replaces that word with reckless instead. Irresponsible. Ill-advised. Completely and _totally stupid._

Because if she’s being completely honest, right now the thing she wants to do more than anything is kiss him, and that is startling both in its newness and in its intensity.

She thinks that doing so might either be the one of the best decisions she’s ever made or the absolute worst, and it’s that extreme uncertainty that holds her back from doing anything at all. She takes another deep breath and lets it out slowly, letting the moment pass and pushing past the sensation of want.

She keeps her hand in his but pushes herself up to a seated position next to him, because she still wants to be close to him but being pressed up against him is dangerously intoxicating. Whatever comes of this, whatever happens as a result of – well, for  _whatever_ it is she’s feeling and wants right now – the morning before his estranged mother’s funeral seems like the worst possible time and place to try and figure it all out.

She looks down at him and smiles, and if it’s more openly affectionate than it normally is, it’s at least more honest, too.

“Well, here’s another thing I know.” She wraps his hand in both of hers, then brings it up to her mouth and brushes her lips lightly across his palm. And yeah,  _that’s_ definitely a little more intimate and lot more over the bright line of friendship she’s trying desperately not to erase completely. But really, this entire weekend so far has been both those things and she’s way too exhausted from both lack of sleep and the mental effort of trying to ignore that reality to actually regret it.

Besides, when she meets his gaze – all wide-eyed and wanting and honest in that way she’s coming to realize is incredibly attractive to her – she recognizes that the problem is neither with desire nor reciprocation – just timing.  

So she doesn’t move away when he moves his hand to rest his hand flat against her cheek; leans into it instead, nuzzling her cheek into the softness of his palm. Then, she smiles at him and says –

“Both of us are pretty damn lucky.” 

* * *

She is nearly positive that she is way too keyed up to fall back asleep while watching E.T, except that the next thing she knows, Schneider is gently shaking her awake.

She lifts her head from his shoulder, which is apparently just way more comfortable than any one shoulder has a right to be, and shakes the sleep from her eyes.

“Sorry I keep falling asleep on you.”

He smiles.

“Don’t be.” He motions to the clock on the nightstand. “We have about an hour and a half before we need to leave, so I figured you’d probably want to start getting ready.”

She nods and stretches next to him, running her hand through her mess of curls as she does.

“Meet you downstairs in an hour and a half?”

He takes a deep breath and nods, the lines of his face falling into misery.

“Hey,” she says softly, taking his hand. “I’ll be right next to you the entire time, so, you know, feel free to use me as an excuse to have to leave a conversation or not talk to someone or – well – whatever, really.”

The corner of his mouth tilts upwards momentarily, then he just shrugs.

“Most everyone there won’t recognize me or know me, probably. And the one person who will, I’d actually want you to meet.”  

“Who’s that?”

“My Aunt Emily.” He glances over at her. “We were close when I was growing up - she came to all my recitals and games even when father didn’t and mom stopped going.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, she was the one who called me to tell me about mom.”

”So you guys are still close?”

He sways his head from side to side and lifts his shoulder.

“Kinda? Closer than I am with anyone else from mom’s side of the family…or, you know, mom.” He squeezes her hand before he lets go and gets out of the bed, brushing his hands across his t-shirt. “She’s actually visited me in LA few times. It’s been a while though – she moved to Toronto to live with her daughter and cross country flights are expensive. But she’ll be the one person there who’ll be happy to see me.”

He offers her his hand and tugs her out of bed, the movement causing her to brush up close to him when she pushes off a little too hard against the bed. She doesn’t move back right away, though she knows she needs to. But she just stands pressed up against him, her fingers intertwined with his, acutely aware of his hand resting lightly on her waist.

She really, really needs to move away from him. Knows that she needs to, desperately and definitively.

Except that all she can think about is the warmth of him  – the press of his fingertips in the small expanse of skin where her shirt has ridden up, the light touch of air when he exhales above her, the expression flickering in his eyes when she lifts her head to look up at him.

His fingers brush up against her skin, then curl around the hem of her shirt, slowly pulling it down until it meets the elastic waist of her sweatpants. She takes a deep, slow breath, hoping that he doesn’t notice how hard she has to try to make sure it isn’t shaky, then steps away from him.

“So, I’ll see you downstairs?”

He clears his throat, then nods.

“Yeah, by the fountain?”

She nods in return, gives his hand one last squeeze, then very quickly walks out of the bedroom and basically sprints out of the suite.

Once she gets to her room, she immediately hops into the shower, blasting herself with cold water for as long as she can handle without giving herself hypothermia, then switching it to a scaldingly hot temperature.

She gets out and towels off, then looks at herself in the mirror.

“Ay, Penelope,” she says, biting her lip then shaking her head. “What the hell is going on with you?”

It’s a question with no answer right now, so she tries another one.

“What are you going to do?”

Her reflection, of course, has no answer for her – just looks back at her with the same level of uncertainty and want back that’s currently roiling in pit of her stomach.

She sighs and turns away from the mirror, opening the door to the bathroom and closing her eyes as the rush of cool air hits her face. The sensation helps to center her somewhat.

Then, she shivers slightly against the abrupt change in temperature and she’s suddenly reminded of the night before – the way Schneider’s arms had tightened around her when a light shiver had rolled through her, how he’d trailed his hand down her arm as he reached down to grab the blanket that had fallen to their waist, the gentle murmur of his voice in her ear when he’d asked if she was better once he’d draped the blanket over them again.

She sighs heavily and tries not to think of how soft his skin is as she walks into her massive room with its massive, unslept-on bed.

So of course that’s all she can think about.

“Get it together, Penelope,” she says out loud, trying to ignore how crazy she’s being right now. She lays back onto the bed and closes her eyes.

Here, in the comfort of her own room, without the press of his body against hers or the feel of his hair against her fingertips, and with solid concrete walls between them, it feels safe to finally think about it:

The fact that she really, really wants to kiss Schneider.

She groans loudly and rubs her hands across her face, annoyed and conflicted and anxious.

It’s not that she doesn’t think he’d kiss her back; in fact, it’s knowing that he will makes her work to avoid it. But his life this past week has involved a lot of huge, life-altering changes. Adding one more to the list isn’t exactly advisable.

Part of her thinks that she should be more curious about where or when or why exactly this is happening now – or, really, at all even. Because she knows that even a year ago, the desire to kiss him would’ve been unfathomable.

But of course that would’ve been before she’d really valued his honesty and sincerity and steadiness, before she’d recognized the small miracle of his generosity.

And that would’ve been long before she’d known the depths of his loneliness or been able to fully appreciate the strength and resilience he’d had to learn because of it.

Most of all, she wouldn’t have known then the feel of his fingers intertwined in hers or his arms around her; couldn’t have predicted how easy it would be or how content it’d make her feel.

And it’s the knowing of all this makes the once unfathomable now undeniable.

The biggest revelation of all is that while the last three days or so have given her a reason to think of Schneider in a different way, they also haven’t actually given her anything new – just made her realize what’s been there all along.

And when it comes down to it, the why or when and how it came to be that she wants to kiss Schneider doesn’t really matter. What matters is that she wants to kiss him, and she’s pretty sure that’s a feeling that isn’t going away any time soon.

In fact, if the past twelve hours are anything to go by, it’s a feeling that’s only going to get stronger.


	5. Chapter 5

She’s strapping on her shoes on when she hears a knock.

“Pen?” Schneider calls out from the other side of the door. “It’s me.”

She looks at the clock, then hurries over to let Schneider in.

“Am I late?” She asks as she’s unlocking the door. “Because it’s still –.”

She stops speaking abruptly as the door swings open and reveals Schneider standing on the other side of it, holding the coat he bought for her and looking extremely – a part of her actually thinks  _absurdly_  – good in his black on black suit. It’s been perfectly tailored so that it emphasizes the athleticism of his tall frame rather than his lankiness and she finds herself appreciating his shoulders in a way she never has before. He’s wearing different glasses, too – round, tortoiseshell ones that make him look less hipster and more like his age in every possible positive connotation of that phrase.

She actually has to swallow a few times in a row because her mouth has gone dry, and she swears it suddenly feels fifteen degrees hotter than it did a moment ago.

Luckily, Schneider doesn’t seem to have noticed that she’s dropped the entire last half of her sentence and has just spent way too long staring at him. He’s just looks at her and smiles, though it doesn’t escape her notice that there’s more heat than warmth in that, too.

“You look beautiful,” he says before stepping through the doorway. “Well, you always do, but especially so.”

She closes the door behind her and leans against it.

“Well, back at ya.” She cringes inwardly. Maybe a little outwardly, too. “I mean, you look really good.”

“Yeah?” He asks, the question just uncertain enough to be cute rather than cloying.

She smiles, then reaches up to fix his tie even though it’s already perfectly straight.

“Yeah, you look very handsome.” She barely holds herself back from fist pumping because she’s seriously proud that she said handsome and kept it at that rather than blurting out loud what her mind is saying, which is somewhere along the lines of:  _you look incredibly hot and I keep wanting to run my hands down your suit and I don’t know if it’s the suit or you, but either way it’s definitely not appropriate right this moment._

Then of course, some part of her then thinks:  _so when will it be the appropriate moment?_

She clears her throat and shoves that voice to the back of her mind so she can ignore it.

“I really like your glasses, by the way.” And, yup, there goes her traitorous hand again, reaching up to tap her fingers against the frames while her palm rests lightly against his cheek. But she can’t begrudge herself for it – not when Schneider leans into her touch and smiles at her as he does.

“My mom had ones like these when I was growing up. That’s why I bought them in the first place. ” He adjust them, then clears his throat. “I figured today was as good a day as any to wear them.”

She makes a non committal humming sound in the back of her throat, though what she really wants to say is something along the lines of:  _Any day is a good day to wear them._

It’s absolutely true, but it also absolutely sounds like flirting. She’s sure she doesn’t mean it that way but also…well, ok – so she’s actually not really all that sure she doesn’t mean it that way. It’s hard to get everything sorted out in her head when she’s just spent the last hour thinking about how she wants to kiss him, and now he’s standing this close to her and smelling really good and looking even better.

She takes a deep breath and smiles at him; tells herself that it’s a little profane and certainly macabre – not to mention completely inappropriate – to start intentionally flirting with someone a half hour before their mother’s funeral.

So she moves past him with her back up against the wall of the narrow entryway so that there’s absolutely no chance that she accidentally brushes up against him, finds that it’s easier for her to breath normally once she’s in the high-ceilinged space of the main room of the suite.

“You’re not late or anything – I’m early.” He drapes her coat over the chair that’s next to him. “You forgot your coat and I was getting all fidgety, so I figured I’d give it to you and then just hang out over here until you were done getting ready.”

She nods, then watches him shake out his own coat then put it on in one fluid motion. It’s a long, dark grey wool coat that looks like it costs more than her car payment and also brings together the entire look he has going on right now in a way that’s almost unbearably unattractive.

She bites her lip, then sits down on the futon and fiddles with the straps of her shoes – mostly to give herself something to do while she regains her composure. When she feels like she can actually look at him without feeling overly warm, she lifts her head.

She smiles, mostly because he looks apprehensive and slightly anxious and she wants to reassure him, but also partly because she’s pushed aside the wave of wanting enough that she can actually meet his gaze and not feel like she’s going to combust.

“So, I’m all ready to go if you are.”

He nods, then picks up her jacket and holds it out like he wants to help her into it.

She looks at it, then at him and has to stop from visibly steeling herself before she quickly walks over and turns around. She puts her arms through the sleeves, shivers slightly at the feel of Schneider’s hand when it brushes up her arm as he settles the coat across her shoulders. She’s about to move her hands behind her to pull the hair out from under it when she feels Schneider’s fingertips against the soft dip just below her ear. He traces a slow path across the back of her neck, his touch languid and lingering in a way that makes her glad her back is to him so he can’t see the way her eyes flutter, then shut involuntarily. He lifts his hand and pulls her hair out gently from under the coat, then repeats the same soft, slow movement with his opposite hand to free the rest of her hair. She feels his hand smooth down the curtain of her hair, which she’s intensely thankful for because it gives her a second to catch her breath again.

She takes a half step away from him before turning around and looking up at him.

“Thank you, Schneider.” And she almost winces at how breathy the words sound.

Schneider doesn’t seem to notice, though – just takes a deep breath and nods. She’s close enough to notice that it shakes a little as he does, and that realization manages to both calm her and thrill her at the same time.

“How do I look?” She asks, tilting her head at him and smiling.

The corner of his mouth turns up in a half-smile.

“Breathtaking.”

* * *

He reaches for her hand the minute they leave her room, his fingers automatically intertwining with hers. The tension from moments ago has dissipated somewhat, now simmering deep below a layer of anxiety on his part and practiced evasion on hers. Instead, she focuses on being a steadying force for Schneider, all easy smiles and firm grips on his hand.

He doesn’t say much as they take the elevator down to the lobby, mostly alternates between squeezing her hand tightly and glancing down at her like he’s about to say something only to breath in deeply and turn away instead.

He lets go of her hand for all of thirty seconds while they get in the car, then reaches over the middle console the moment she buckles her seatbelt and interlaces their fingers together once more.

He doesn’t say anything beyond telling Silis they’re ready to go, just tightens his grip on her hand and starts tapping his foot against the floor. She watches him take something out of his pocket – a coin of some sort – and start fiddling with it, turning it over in his fingers and rubbing alongside the edges of it.  

“What is that?” She asks after a few quiet moments, nodding towards the coin in his hand. It’s too big to be any kind of denomination she’s familiar with, bronze colored and heavy looking with words stamped into either side of it.

He blinks rapidly, then looks down at it, apparently surprised to find it in his hand.

He holds it up close to her.

“It’s my seven year AA chip.” He hands it to her, and she studies it closely as he keeps talking. “I normally keep it in my wallet but sometimes when I’m feeling…rough, it helps to have it closer to me. Like, uh, you know – a reminder of everything I’ve worked for. That if I can make it to seven years of sobriety, I can make it through anything.”

She nods and turns the coin over, reads through the words of the serenity prayer.

“And it helps?”

He nods.

“It does.” He squeezes her hand, then lifts their intertwined hands up slightly from where they’re resting on the center console. “Though right now, this is helping me more.”

She smiles, then hands the chip back to him; watches as he immediately resumes running his fingers along the edges of it.

“I’m glad I can help.” She gestures to the coin. “But I’m glad you have that, too. It’s good to be reminded of how strong you are.” She gives him a small smile. “It’s a good reminder for me, too.”

He glances over at her, then glances down at the chip.

“You know, when I got my first year chip, my Aunt Emily came to see me in LA and gave me this really nice, handmade chip holder.” He glances over at her, a pensive look in his eyes. “There were twelve spots on it and she told me that she’d get me a new one when I got to thirteen.” The corner of his mouth turns up. “Everytime I get another chip, I put it in there and send her a picture.” He clears his throat. “It, uh, probably seems kind of stupid, but those first couple of years…sometimes it was just knowing that I wouldn’t be able to send her a picture that kept me sober.”

She shakes her head.

“That’s not stupid at all, Schneider.” She squeezes his hand. “I’m really glad your Aunt Emily could support you. And I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

He gives her a small smile.

“Me too.”

She asks him about his Aunt Emily then, partly because she’s curious to know about the one relative he’s talked about who actually seems to care about him, and partly because talking keeps his anxiety at bay.

He at least stops jiggling his leg, which is good because it was strong enough to shake the entire back seat and she was getting a little nauseated.

She learns that his Aunt Emily is the older sister to his mom, seemingly quieter and more introverted than his mother or him, but with the same sort of steadfast loyalty that Schneider has. At least, that’s her impression from the stories that Schneider tells. She’s a retired high school teacher who now writes children’s books, and she never fails to send a Christmas card and call him on his birthday and Thanksgiving and July 5th.

She almost asks about July 5th before she remembers the story about the celebratory drink and the alley. She feels a tenderness towards Aunt Emily despite never having met her or heard about her. She almost asks Schneider why she’d never heard about her before she realizes the answer to her own question. It’s the same reason she never knew he went to AA on Wednesdays or that he’d inherited his interest in art from his mom or that his sponsor’s name was Chris:

She’d never bothered to ask.  

“Also, Aunt Emily sometimes calls me Alex Mango,” Schneider says, breaking her out of her guilt encrusted thoughts.

“I’m sorry, what?” She asks, sure that she’s misheard him. “Alex Mango?”

Schneider grins.

“When Mom was pregnant with me, she didn’t want anyone to know the sex of the baby, so for a while they would just refer to me as whatever size fruit I was at the time. Kiwi, apple, tomato, you know.”

She smiles.

“Babies are mango sized for a while, depending on the size of the mango.”

He nods.

“Yeah and it’s Aunt Emily’s favorite fruit, so she just liked calling me that.”

“And Alex?”

Schneider shrugs.

“Once I stopped being fruit sized and just became baby sized, she figured I should be given a name. And since she still didn’t know if I was gonna be a boy or a girl, she just picked a gender neutral name.”

Penelope nods, grinning.

“So, Alex Mango.”

He chuckles.

“Yeah, Alex Mango. Father hated it, which I think is part of the reason she kept using it even after I was born.”

It’s not a bad reason to do so, she thinks – especially given everything she knows about Schneider’s father.  

“Well, I obviously am a big fan of the name Alex and mango is the undisputed best fruit, so I feel like your aunt and I already have something in common there.” She leans over and rests her head on his shoulder, because she doesn’t necessarily think it’s smart to look at him too closely when she starts talking again. “And we both care about you a lot, so there’s another thing.”

He lets out a sound that’s halfway between a chuckle and a sigh, then tips his head down to rest it on hers.

“It’s weird to hear you say that.” He clears his throat. “Good weird, though. Weird in the best possible way.”

She exhales sharply and shakes her head, her cheek rubbing against his shoulder.  

“I’m sorry, Schneider.” She chews on the corner of her lip.

“Wait, why are you sorry?”

She lifts her head from his shoulder and looks at him.

“Because it shouldn’t be – weird to hear me say that, I mean.” She tilts her head to the side and lifts her shoulder. “But it is, and I’m sorry about that.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s more than fine, actually.” He draws his brows together and pulls his teeth over his lips. “I’m sorry, Pen. I didn’t mean weird as in weird. I mean – .”

“Schneider –.”

“I guess I meant weird but I didn’t mean weird-bad or even weird-weird –.”

“Schneider –.”

“And I definitely didn’t mean to make you feel bad, because that’s the last thing I’d ever want to do. What I really meant to say was –.”

She bites her lip to keep from smiling, then reaches over and places her hand gently on his mouth to stop him. It’s certainly a different tactic than the one she’d used the last time she’d had to interrupt one of his runaway rambles; she tells herself this makes more sense given the confined space they’re in and that it has nothing to do with wanting to feel the softness of his lips, but knowing that kissing him to be quiet is not the way to go about things right now. It’s definitely not that at all.

And anyway, it works, too.

Schneider immediately stops talking, just stares at her intently with those bright blue eyes of his while she tries not to think about just how soft his lips feel against her fingertips.

She pulls her hand away from his mouth and rests it instead on top of their clasped hands.

“Schneider, if I felt bad it was because I deserved to.” She holds up her hand to keep him from protesting. “What I meant is that you should know how important you are to me, and if you don’t, then I should try and change that.”

He looks at her intently.

“Well, you wanted to come here with me, right?”

“I did.”

“And you’re still glad that you did?”

“I am.”

He nods.

“Then I know.” His mouth turns up slightly. “Just you being here lets me know.”

She squeezes his hand.

“I should say it more though.”

He tips his head and lets the small upturn of his lips relax into a full smile.

“Well, I will say that it is nice to hear it.”

He’s about to say something else when the car slows to a stop.

“We’ve arrived,” Silis announces from the front seat.

Schneider lets out a long, steady exhale as he flexes his fingers, his head dropping down against his chest.

“You ready?” She asks, tilting her head down to she can meet his eye.

“Not really.”

She rests her hand on his cheek.

“Hey, I’m gonna be right there next to you the whole time, ok?”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, leaning his face into her hand before he opens his eyes and nods.

“Ok, I’m ready.”

* * *

The lawn of the cemetery is pretty crowded – she figures there must be a good 200 people milling around in dark clothes and quietly chatting in small groups.

She glances over at Schneider and sees him scanning the crowd, manages to catch the exact moment when he sees his Aunt Emily. She knows because his eyes light up immediately, and the buzz she can feel coming off of him shifts into anticipation instead of anxiety.

He looks over at her and smiles, a giddy, almost boyish look in his eyes that’s wholly endearing to her. He leans down and gestures to a small group of women directly in front of them.

“That’s my Aunt Emily,” he says, directing her attention to a petite woman with long, curling red hair. She’s listening intently to whatever the person next to her is saying, nodding along, though Penelope can tell that she, too, is scanning the crowd.

She watches as his Aunt Emily finds the two of them, and it’s heartwarming that she can see his aunt light up despite being as far away as they are.

She watches as she excuses herself from whatever conversation she’s in and very nearly jogs over to where they’re standing. She doesn’t look especially similar to Schneider – she’s probably just  as tall as Penelope, paler than Schneider, with wide, deep set brown eyes and a square-shaped face. Though she does have that same sort of youthfulness that he does – the one that makes her look at least a decade younger than she actually is, so that she looks like a woman in her early 60’s rather than one in her mid-70s.  

“Alex mango!” She exclaims, a wide, bright smile on her face, her arms thrust out in front of her.

Schneider grins in return, letting go of Penelope’s hand momentarily so he can lean down and scoop her up in a hug.

“Aunt Emily!” He wraps his arms tightly around her and squeezes hard. “It’s so great to see you.”

She lets go of him and steps back just enough so that she can cup his face in her hands.

“You too, sweetheart. I’m so glad you could make it.” She touches his glasses, the corner of her eyes softening in equal parts affection and melancholy. “You look lovely.”

He offers her a small smile, then leans down to give her a kiss on the cheek.

“You too, Auntie Em.”

She moves her hands from his face then pats either side of her own.

“It’s that spa membership you set me up with for my birthday all those years ago.” She smiles at him, and in that smile, Penelope sees the resemblance between the two. It’s warm and wide and open in that same way that makes you want to smile in return. “That,” his Aunt Emily continues with a twinkle in her eye, “and sunscreen from Korea.”

“Alright!” He says, obviously pleased. “So you finally started listening to me.”

“My darling mango, I always listen to you. It’s just a matter of separating the frivolous from the factual.”

Penelope chuckles at that, though she quickly tries to cover it up with a cough. His aunt glances over at her with a twinkle in her eye and smiles, then looks back over at Schneider.

“So, has all that time in LA robbed you of your manners or…?” She asks, tipping her head in Penelope’s direction.

Schneider blinks rapidly and pulls an apologetic face in Penelope’s direction before he steps back and rests his hand at the small of her back.

She’s suddenly filled with an absurd feeling of anxiety at the coming introduction. Absurd, because she knows that he’ll introduce her as his friend, maybe throw in the qualifier of “best” in there.

And of course there is absolutely nothing wrong or even approaching problematic with that introduction. That is, after all, what she is to him. That’s what they are to one another. That’s the reason he asked her to come with him and why she chose to say yes. It’s the truth in almost every sense of the word.

Every sense but this one: that there’s been a shift in their dynamic in these last 24 hours that suddenly makes a word as simple as  _friend_  seem like a half-truth, a concept that comes up short to describing whatever it is now between them. But there’s no word for that  _almost_ , for that  _maybe_  that lies between them.

There’s no word for that space between  _friend_  and  _more than_.  

Schneider clears his throat, breaking her free from her spiralling inner monologue. She smiles and squares her shoulders, tells herself not to look or feel – what? Disappointed, she guesses, maybe even distressed – when he calls her his friend. Tells herself it would be silly to do so because that’s what she is.

“Aunt Emily, this is Penelope,” he says, completely bypassing all of her unexpected anxieties and saying her name like it’s the only explanation his aunt needs. “Penelope, this is my Aunt Emily.”

She exhales the breath she didn’t even realize she was holding as she steps forward with her hand outstretched, finds herself enveloped in the arms of his aunt instead.

She’s surprised but returns the hug immediately, her arms winding around Emily’s small frame.

Emily steps back and smiles warmly, her hands lightly gripping Penelope’s arms.

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Penelope,” she says in a way that makes Penelope feel like her coming here isn’t a surprise at all. “I’m sorry that it isn’t under better circumstances.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, too. I’m sorry for your loss,” she replies, and means it. Schneider may have had a fraught relationship with his mother, and she may harbor some secondhand resentment towards her because of that, but it’s obvious from just the few stories she’s heard about Emily that she and Schneider’s mother had been incredibly close.

And while she doesn’t have a sister, she thinks there must be something particularly staggering about burying your younger sister – like God messed up and got the order wrong.

Emily smiles gently at her and squeezes her arm before letting go.

“Thank you.” She steps back then motions towards Schneider. “And thank you for coming with him. I hated to think of him having to come back here on his own.”

Penelope falls back to stand next to Schneider and smiles up at him when he immediately twines their fingers back together.

“There was no way I’d let him go through all of this on his own,” she says before turning back to face Emily.

She sees his aunt’s gaze flick down to their interlaced fingers. She wonders if Emily is going to ask about it – God knows that if situations were reversed, if she’d brought Schneider to some family gathering with her and held his hand, any one of her tías would be intent on figuring out his entire family history, the breadth of their relationship, and a detailed plan of his intentions.

But Emily does none of that, just nods slightly – a gesture small enough that it seems like it’s mostly to answer some silent question posed only to herself –  then smiles at them both.

“I’m glad you have one another.” She looks as though she’s about to say more when a dark-haired man in his 50’s comes up from behind her and puts his hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, glancing apologetically at Schneider and Penelope. “But we need your help with something real quick.”

Emily nods at him, watches him dart away before she takes a deep breath and turns back to face them.

She looks up at Schneider and for a brief second, Penelope swears she sees a look of deep guilt on the older woman’s face. But maybe it’s just a trick of the noonday sun because in the next moment, Emily’s expression is once again a mix of warmth and sadness.

“I’ll see after the service,” she says, then reaches over to rest her hand on Schneider’s bicep. “Promise me you won’t leave before I can talk to you?”

Schneider furrows his brows.

“Sure, but we can also just talk at the wake if you want.”

Emily presses her lips together tightly, then gives him a close-lipped smile.

“I think…” She sighs and then shakes her head. “I’ll just find you after the service.”


	6. Chapter 6

They slowly make their way to where the chairs are set up. She isn’t really paying attention to where they’re going, just follows Schneider’s lead as she studies the crowd of people around them. It’s an eclectic mix of people – anywhere from young hipsters in their early 20s to middle-aged men who look like they would be cast in heartburn commercial, to old, wealthy white women in gaudy jewelry.

She finds herself so interested in the groups of people slowly making their way to the seating that she doesn’t even notice that Schneider’s standing stock still in the middle of the lawn until she nearly trips and falls because she’s kept moving when he hasn’t. It’s only the firm grasp he has on her hand that keeps her from doing so, and it occurs to her that he has a surprising amount of strength given the leanness of his frame.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, glancing down at her before looking back up at something a few feet away from them.

She follows his gaze to a large portrait of who she assumes is his mother, propped up on a stand just before the very back row of chairs.

The crowd of people is bunching up into something resembling a line to file into the divided section of chairs, a group of ushers handing out programs and gesturing to open seats.

“Hey,” she murmurs, squeezing his hand and leaning close to him. “We can go around the side and just find a seat ourselves if you want. We don’t need a program.”

He glances over to the far side of the chairs and bites his lip before shaking his head.

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s just – .” He clears his throat. “I got caught off guard, but it’s fine. I’m fine.”

He takes a deep breath and visibly steels himself before looking down at her and nodding, gently tugging her forward as he files in behind the clump of people in front of them.

The line is moving slowly enough, and they’re at an angle where she can study the portrait of his mom.

She doesn’t know when the photo was taken because his mom has that same preternatural agelessness that both Schneider and Emily have, so she might be anywhere from her mid 40s to early 60s in the photo. Either way, she is stunningly beautiful – with flawless skin and bright green eyes, all offset by long waves of deep red hair.

But what comes across the most – even just in that photograph – is how genuinely likable she looks.  _Charismatic_ , even, like some 50’s era movie star or  _effervescent_ , which is a word she’s only recently learned from helping Elena study for the SATs but seems the best way to describe the photo in front of her.

It makes her so angry.

Because while it may just be a photo, it’s that coupled with the amount of people here today and the fact that every single one of them looks genuinely upset that makes it so obvious that his mother was not just likable but well-liked. Loved, even, given the amount of people who start crying the minute they see her picture.

And it’s the complete opposite of what she thought she’d find, given that what she mostly knows about the woman is that she’d only ever reached out to her son once a year, every year since he was 12.

It was easier to stomach when she cast his mother as some distant, unknowable woman who kept everyone at arm’s length. But a quick glance around at the very real sadness on the faces of those around her proves to her that isn’t true.

As they walk over to two empty seats towards the back of the setup, she thinks: how could a woman this magnetic and this loved and this missed have missed out on her own son’s life for the last 30 years?

A man in his 60’s steps up to the front and begins welcoming them all and she glances over at Schneider to see if he recognizes him at all, but his face just registers an empty blankness that’s weird and disconcerting. She bites her lip and looks around to the bereft expressions on the faces of everyone around her. She tries to pay attention to whatever it is the next man at the front is saying, but all she can hear, over and over again in her mind, is Schneider’s small, quiet voice asking –

_Why didn’t she love me?_

She wishes there was an easy answer to it. She’d hoped that coming here would provide her with one, had figured that Schneider’s mother was unlovable and therefore had little love to dole out to the one person who needed it and deserved it the most.

But it isn’t that at all.

She looks down at the program for the first time since it was handed to her and is surprised at how short the entire thing is. Given the amount of people here today, she’d figured there’d be a couple of slots reserved for people standing up and talking about her. But there’s only one speaker listed – Emily – and only the very bare minimum of elements on the program – a welcome, a prayer, a reading, a eulogy.

In fact, by the time she looks up from the program, the reading is already over, and it’s Emily who’s slowly climbing out of her chair and making her way up to the front.

Penelope sits up straight and looks over at Schneider, the expression on his face at least no longer that measured sort of blankness but instead a mixture of heartache and fondness.

She squeezes his hand and shifts over closer to him, turning her head slightly to drop a soft kiss onto his shoulder before looking back up at the podium. Schneider squeezes her hand in return; then, after a moment’s hesitation, lifts their hands and kisses the back of hers before resting their intertwined hands on his thigh.

Emily looks out into the crowd and takes a quick, sharp breath before she begins speaking.

”I know there are a lot of people out there who could help talk about my sister – what she did for you, how she touched your life, what she meant to you. But one of her last wishes was that this all be as short as possible – and when your dying younger sister asks something of you, it’s basically impossible to say no.”

Emily’s voice shakes at the end, and she takes a deep breath before continuing on.

“And you know, Dana didn’t even want to have a funeral at all. She told me that she didn’t want people to stand up here and make up a bunch of ridiculous things about her just because she’d died.”

She looks up at the audience, a smile ghosting across her lips.

“I told her that they wouldn’t have to make up any ridiculous things – there were plenty of ridiculous things about her that were true.”

Laughter runs through the crowd, and Emily lets a small smile form at the edges of her mouth.

“I’m pretty sure saying that is the reason she let me be the one person to say something here today.

Whatever you say, she told me, I want it to be honest.”

Emily looks down at the paper in her hands and licks her lips before continuing.  

“So, I’m up here today to be honest with all of you about Dana Walsh, in a way that only sisters can be. Those of you – anyone here who has a sister knows what I mean.”

She takes another deep breath before she starts speaking.

“I looked it up the other day and I found out that Dana means bold in Irish. I don’t think my parents did that on purpose, but I have to say that it turned out to be a pretty prophetic name because my sister was bold. She would say and do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted and no one could convince her otherwise. She wasn’t afraid of trying new things, she wasn’t afraid of failure, she wasn’t afraid of what people thought of her. She was bold to the point of fearlessness, and because of that, she did and saw and accomplished so much in her life.”

A wistful smile crosses her features.  

“And because she wasn’t afraid to fail and because she never second-guessed herself, my sister approached everything in her life with a level of enthusiasm that was inspiring, even if it did get exhausting at times. It was always all or nothing with Dana – if she was getting a chocolate cake, it would be the best chocolate cake; if she was throwing you a birthday party, it was going to be the birthday party you’d never forget. If she was curating an exhibit, it would win award after award after award.”

Emily looks across the crowd, and for the first time her smile is neither small nor measured – just wide and bright with love and memory.  

“She had this ability to celebrate – really celebrate – any and everything. It could be your first child or your first kiss; it could be your fifth child or fifteenth kiss. It could be the fact that the sun was shining when the news had said it was going to be cloudy. If there was something to celebrate, Dana was ready to celebrate with you. And her ability to celebrate made you – made all of us – feel like no matter what, life was pretty damn good.”   

Her smile dims as she sighs.

“But these things about her that made her so much fun, that made her such a vibrant person - they were also the things that could sometimes make it difficult to be her friend, her coworker, her sister…her son.”

She flicks her eyes up and meets Schneider’s, and even from where they’re sitting, Penelope can see the sorrow and apology in them.

“My sister’s fearlessness also made her the most stubborn person in this universe – and maybe in the next couple of universes over as well. Once she made a decision, no one – pretty sure not even God himself – could get her to change it. It used to drive me absolutely crazy – how you couldn’t get her to make a decision if she didn’t want to make it at that exact moment or change course if things needed to change.”

She shakes her head.  

“And my sister…”

Her voice falters for a moment and she has to swallow thickly a few times before she continues.

“That enthusiasm that she approached all the great thing things in her life, that had the ability to make you feel like the world was a fantastic place to be in at any given time…well, that had a downside, too. A tremendous one.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath in as if steeling herself before she looks back up.

“Many of you know this, but some of you don’t.”

Emily holds up her hand, a small object in between her thumb and forefinger that reflects the light of the noonday sun. Penelope’s not quite sure what it is at first, but then she feels Schneider stiffen next to her, hears him draw in a sharp breath, and immediately recognizes what Emily is holding.

It’s the exact same thing Schneider is currently spinning in his own hand: an AA chip.

“Dana struggled with addiction her entire adult life. That same enthusiasm that made it so fun to be around her became the thing that dragged her into her addictions. That boldness that made her so successful was the same thing that kept her from admitting it, that kept her from getting the help that she needed for so long.”

She bites her lip and looks out, unseeing into the crowd.

“Addiction took her away from so many people. It kept her from being the best version of herself – the best daughter, sister, mother, friend – that we all knew she could be.” She takes a deep breath and let’s the sentence trail off for a long moment while she finds Schneider in the crowd once more. Penelope looks over at him, her heart breaking at the absolutely stricken expression on his face. She can almost see him steadily traveling over all the memories in his mind, looking at them in a new light. She glances back up at Emily, sees that same look of sorrow and apology from before. Emily meets her eye and bites her lip before taking a deep breath and looking back down at her notes. “But, uh, ten years ago, Dana took all that stubbornness and fearlessness and enthusiasm, and she funneled it into her recovery instead. And because of that, I’ve since had one more thing to admire my sister for – her strength.” She finally looks back up.

“The strength to keep pushing on, moment after moment, day after day no matter how awful you feel or how hard it seems. The strength to always try and become better than you were before. The strength…” She blows out a harsh breath and shakes her head before going on. “The strength to recognize all the mistakes you’ve made, all the wrong choices, all the paths you wish you had taken and own them instead of making excuses for them.”

She holds up the chip again.

“Dana picked up her ten year chip three months before she died. She kept it beside her all throughout her hospital stay, kept it in her hand all throughout hospice. And the night she died, she gave it to me.” She bites her lip and looks over at it. “I’ve kept it in my hand almost constantly since she died because it reminds me so much of her – her addiction, her stubborn refusal to recognize it for so long…but also her dedication, her enthusiasm, her strength going into recovery.”

She takes a deep breath and looks out across the crowd.

“And I know that that’s how Dana would want us to remember her – to appreciate all the best parts, to acknowledge all the worst. To know that, above all, she loved us – imperfectly and flawed as she was – with all the strength and enthusiasm that she exhibited in all other parts of her life.”

She gives one last, tremulous smile before she takes a deep breath and steps down from the audience, her eyes connecting with Schneider’s every step of the way until she turns back around and sits down.

There isn’t much left of the funeral after that – a few more closing remarks from the same guy that gave the welcome as well as a quick explanation of where the wake is being held.

She doesn’t hear much of it though – she’s more preoccupied with worriedly looking over at Schneider while also pretending that she isn’t doing that at all. She doesn’t think she needs to  be as covert as she’s trying to be about it, given that the expression on Schneider’s face is currently cycling through blankness and bewilderment and bleakness, his eyes looking off in the distance, likely marching through some parade of unseen memories that he probably feels like he can’t even really trust any more.

And the thing is, he probably can’t. Or at least, they’ll tell a story he never could’ve known to look for before.

Because while she’s isn’t sure what exactly it changes for her in thinking about his mother, she knows that it changes something. It doesn’t completely excuse the last 30 years – and the last 10 years in particular are still subject to that same level of scrutiny as before – but she can’t help the way that it shifts her thinking. Forces her to reframe it all, to see his mother’s absence as deliberate restraint rather than an acute sort of carelessness.

She still has a laundry list of questions that are simmering at the top of her mind, but the tenor of them has changed now – if not conciliatory, then at least less accusatory.

And if that’s how  _she’s_  feeling – she, who had no real knowledge of this woman until four days ago, who knows nothing real about her other than secondhand stories from a man who only ever knew her as a child – then she can’t even begin to imagine the thoughts running through Schneider’s mind.

She’s shaken out of her introspective spiral when everyone starts standing up around them. Schneider doesn’t move, just stays seated with an empty, faraway look on his face.

She gets up slowly and squeezes his hand, sees him blink slowly then shake his head, like he’s waking up from a long, deep sleep. He looks up at her, the blankness on his face gone, replaced by a mixture of sorrow and confusion muddying the blueness of his eyes.

“You didn’t know.”

She doesn’t phrase it like a question, but he nods in answer to it anyway.

“No idea.” He looks down at the seven year chip in his own hand. “But I’m thinking about it now and so many of the memories I have with her – especially after the divorce…and it just makes sense.” He shakes his head, draws in a shaky breath. “I feel kinda dumb that I never really thought about it before.”

“Don’t, Schneider. It seems like she probably tried to hide it from you.”

“She did,” a voice says from behind him, and they both turn to find Emily standing there, her fingers running over the edges of his mother’s chip.

“Why?” And Penelope doesn’t think she’s imagining the hurt and betrayal in his voice, the unspoken question of –  _why did you?_

Emily answers it anyway, as though he’d said it aloud rather than just let it linger at the edges of his gaze.  

“She wanted to be the one to tell you. She kept…” Emily sighs. “She said she’d tell you, and I thought she should be the one to do it. But –.”

“She never did. Why? I – .” He swallows thickly and shakes his head. “It would’ve helped – not just because it would’ve explained a lot from when I was young but –.” He looks down at the chip in his hand. “It would’ve helped to know that she’d gone through it, too. That recovery wasn’t something that I was doing alone.” He pockets the chip and looks up at Emily, and for the first time this entire trip, he actually looks upset instead of sad. Almost angry, even. “I shouldn’t have had to do it alone.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am that we did that to you.” She hesitates, then sits down next to him. “Your mother and I – we both… we made a lot of wrong choices…when it came to one another, when it came to you. And I’m so, so incredibly sorry.”

“Why did it have to be a secret at all? Basically everyone here knew.” He scrubs his hand across his beard. “How is it fair that I’m the last to know everything about my own mother? How is it fair that everyone here seems to have a better relationship with her than I did? How is any of this fair?”

Emily pulls her lips between her teeth and nods – slowly, sadly, helplessly.

“It wasn’t fair.  _Isn’t_  fair. Not at all. Not in any way. But…it’s –.” She sighs again. “Alex mango dear, I’m just not the best person to explain it to you. And truthfully, even if I were, I can’t.”

“Then who can?”

She stares at him and takes a deep breath.

“Your father.”

Schneider blinks rapidly, obviously caught off-balance by the reply. Penelope is too, truthfully. As far as she knows, Schneider’s father had very little do with his mother once the divorce was final. What insight he could possibly offer on a woman he barely cared about, if at all, seems limited.

Schneider shakes his head.

“He’s the last person I’d even want to ask.” He steps closer to Emily, his expression pleading and lost. “Can’t you explain it to me please?”

Emily shakes her head, the movement hesitating, tinged with melancholy.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

She sighs heavily, gives a small, helpless shrug.

“It’s complicated, mango.”

“Can you at least  _try_ , Auntie Em?  _Please_.”

She stares at him, her eyes wide with sadness, lined with regret and shame. She opens and shuts her mouth once, twice, three times before she simply shakes her head and sighs.

“It’s not –.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s just – complicated. ”

Schneider drops his head and lets go of Penelope’s hand, runs his fingers through his hair a few times before he shakes his head angrily and stands up.

“What does all that even mean? What exactly could be complicated about this?”

Emily just stares up at him, that same conflicted sort of sorrow and regret in her eyes.

Schneider sighs sharply and turns away from her, running his hands roughly over his beard as he shakes his head.

“I don’t understand – .”

He stops suddenly and grabs his phone from his pocket, his brows furrowing when he looks at the name on the screen.

“It’s father,” he says, glancing up at Emily, her expression suddenly a mix of relief and regret.

“Answer it,” she says quietly, the order somehow gentle despite the firmness underlying it.

Schneider clicks the screen and brings the phone to his ear, the movement jerky – as though his arm is trying to fight him on it.

“Hello, father.”

His voice holds none of the emotion from before – no sadness or anger or pleading. In fact, it holds hardly any emotion at all, is flat almost to the point of monotone, stripped of any markers of the man she normally sees and hears.

It’s completely unnerving.

And while she can’t hear the other side of the conversation, Schneider’s responses and expressions are enough so that she can fill in.

_(Are you at your mother’s funeral?)_

“Yes, it just finished.” He nods. “Yes, I’m here with Aunt Emily.”

_(I need you to come to the house. We need to talk.)_

Schneider squints, a look of confusion in his eyes.

“Come to the house? To talk about what? I thought you were away on business until Wednesday.”

_(Clearly I’m not.)_

Schneider bites his lip and shakes his head.

“There’s mom’s wake.” And even though his face falls into lines of sadness, his voice still maintains that same empty tone.

Penelope isn’t standing all that closely to Schneider, but even she hears the noise his father makes at that – a cross between a laugh and a scoff. Then, a pained look crosses his face.

“No, father,” he says quietly, emotion creeping into his words for the first time. “You’re right. I guess I’m not really in a place right now to drink to mom’s memory or reminisce about all the great times I had with her.”

And, yes, that’s true, but the way Schneider says it – heartbroken and lonely, like he’s just remembered all over again what he had and what he’s lost and what he never knew – makes her want to hit something. Preferably someone. Specifically Schneider’s father.

_(See you soon.)_

“Do you need to speak with me so soon? Can this wait a bit?”

She doesn’t know if his father actually says no, or just hangs up as a response. Either way, Schneider just stares blankly at his phone for a long moment before sitting down and glancing back up at Emily.

“I’m guessing whatever it is that’s complicated is about to get very uncomplicated in the worst possible way.”

“With this –.” She lets out a long, slow breath. “With this situation, there really is no good way to uncomplicate it. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.”

“But there is a better way than to hear it from my father. Whatever it is – whatever any of this is – I know that has to be true.” He shakes his head. “Why does it have to be him?”

“Because that’s who your father is, my darling mango.” She stands up and slowly, carefully – in a way that he at any point could step back or turn away from her – cups his face in her hands. He doesn’t turn away or shake her off, and Penelope’s glad for it. Whatever is behind the complicated nature of this entire mess, she has a strong feeling that Emily was only ever a bystander caught in the crossfire, a survivor left to pick up the pieces.   

And while she doesn’t know exactly how he was involved or what he did, she’s pretty sure that she’ll be able to lump a healthy dose of the blame on Schneider’s father.

Well, she hopes she’ll be able to at least. Nothing she’s heard – either first or secondhand – endears the man to her at all.

Emily leans forward, Schneider’s face still in her hands, and softly kisses him on the forehead.

“I’m sorry, Alex mango. I’m sorry for the secrets and the pain. I’m sorry you had to go through any of this.” She chews on the corner of her lip. “And I’m sorry I can’t be the one to uncomplicate this for you.”

He gives her a long look.

“But you would if you could?”

She nods.

“Absolutely.”

“But you can’t?”  

She shakes her head.

“I cannot.”

He sucks on his teeth, then takes a deep breath.

“Can you answer something else for me, then?”

She brushes her hands down his cheeks, then clasps her hands in front of her.

“Of course.”

“Did mom…did she…” He clears his throat and scrubs his hand across his beard. He looks towards the ground for a moment before lifting his eyes back up to study Emily’s face. “Did she love me?”

“Of course she did,” Emily says immediately, firmly, without a trace of hesitation in her voice. She leans down and wraps both of Schneider’s hands in hers. “Darling, she loved you so much.” She takes a deep breath and squeezes his hand hard before letting go. “Your mom didn’t always know how… She trails off and shakes her head. “Your mom didn’t make all the right choices when it came to showing you that she loved you. I think…I think it’s fair to say that she didn’t even make  _many_  right choices, but – .” She reaches out and rests her palm on his cheek. “Please believe me when I say that she did love you – incredibly and with her whole heart.” She stares at Schneider for a long, silent moment, her eyes never leaving his. Finally, he nods slowly.

“I believe you.”

Emily takes a deep breath and gives him a small, weary smile before she nods and backs away.

“Just…” She sighs. “Just try to remember that when you talk to your father, mango.”

* * *

They don’t say anything for almost the entire walk back to the car. She’s not even sure where to begin or what to say, and it seems as if Schneider is barely even present in that moment. There are more than a few times where it’s lucky he’s holding her hand otherwise she’s sure he would’ve wandered off in the completely wrong direction. **  
**

They’re a few feet away from the car, Silis waiting dutifully by the door to open it for them, when Schneider slows down and gently tugs on her hand to stop.

“Do you want Silis to drop you off before going to my father’s?” He gives a humorless chuckle. “I know you didn’t exactly sign up for a father-son reunion.”

She steps in front of him and studies his expression.

“Do you want to go alone?”

“Well, it isn’t fair to ask you to come to whatever this talk with my father is going to be.” He shrugs and looks away. “And, spoiler alert, but no matter what it’s basically guaranteed to be tense and weird and awkward.”

She links her other hand with his, squeezes both and waits for him to look back at her.

“You didn’t answer my question though. Do you want to go alone?”  

A long, quiet moment settles between them, Schneider staring intently at her, studying the expression on her face. Then, he shakes his head.

“No,” he says quietly. “I’d like…I want you there with me.” He bites his lip, suddenly uncertain. “If that’s ok?”

She nods decisively.

“That’s why I asked.” She smiles up at him. “I want to be there with you and for you when you hear about this whole complicated mess, but I didn’t want to force it.”

He shakes his head.

“Penelope, I al…” He stops abruptly and swallows thickly, looking away from a moment before clearing his throat. “Thank you for coming with me. For wanting to. For just – being awesome and being with me.”  

Abruptly, her brain supplies her with  _always_ , a word that’s as unnecessary as it is out of place.

So instead she just smiles and says  _you’re welcome_ , then tugs him towards the car. Tries not to think of how honest and right the word  _always_  feels to her.


	7. Chapter 7

His father’s home, of course, is enormous – a three-story mansion with white marble columns and multiple balconies that looks like it belongs to a member of some European royal family rather than a Canadian businessman.

“Is this the house you grew up in?” She asks, trying to keep the awe out of her voice and mostly succeeding.

Schneider nods.

“Home sweet home,” he says, shooting her what she thinks is supposed to be a smile but just looks like a painful grimace.

There are three sets of stairs and a fountain on their way to the front door because of course there are, with really intricately shaped shrubbery on either side of them. She can faintly hear the sound of the ocean and smell the saltiness in the air, and she thinks it might all be pretty pleasant if she didn’t know how awful Schneider’s father was and couldn’t practically see the dread and anxiety radiating off of him.

When they get to top of the stairs, the door is already open, a short, blonde man in a crisp blue suit waiting patiently for them. He glances at Penelope, a brief look of curiosity flitting across his features, before he nods at Schneider and ushers them inside.

“Mr. Schneider, your father is waiting in his study.” Schneider’s face twitches at the suffix in front of his name, but he doesn’t say anything, just reaches over to shake the other man’s hand.

“Sorry but I don’t think we’ve met before. Father’s last butler was Jeffrey.”

The man nods and clasps his hand around Schneider’s.

“I replaced Mr. Daniels five years ago. My name is Davis Hawkinson.”

“Nice to meet you.” He gestures to Penelope. “And this is Penelope Alvarez.”

The lack of qualifier or description before her name seems more strange here given that the man obviously has no idea who she is. He doesn’t ask though – just has that same brief look of curiosity in his eyes before he steps forward and extends his hand to her.

“Pleasure, Ms. Alvarez.”

She shakes his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Hawkinson. Or do you prefer Davis?”

He gives her a small smile.

“Whatever is most comfortable to you, Ms. Alvarez.”

“Davis, then,” she says, smiling at him. “And I’m most comfortable with you calling me Penelope.”

He nods at her and smiles again, before looking over at Schneider, who’s just staring down the hall with a look of dread. He must feel Davis looking at him, because he turns his body away from the hall to meet his gaze, starts making small talk with Davis. It’s obvious he’s doing so to prolong the moment where he’ll have to talk to his father, but she doesn’t mind. She’d rather he talk to his father when he’s ready for it – or at least as ready as he can be – and it also gives her the chance to openly gawk at the interior of the house.

They’re standing in the front entrance – she vaguely thinks the word foyer might be the appropriate way to describe it, it certainly sounds fancy enough for it. The floor is white marble interlaid with some sunburst design that looks tacky in the way that only expensive things can, and there are twin curved staircases in front of them with a huge crystal chandelier hanging above it.

Palatial is the word that comes to mind as she studies the layout of the room, and she briefly thinks about the fact that helping Elena study for the SATs is apparently just as helpful for her as it is for Elena.

“You remember where your father’s study is, yes?” Davis asks, in that way that’s polite but also communicates the end of the conversation. He gestures down the hall to their left. “I know he was anxious to speak with you.”

Schneider sighs.

“Yeah, I remember.” He gives Davis a tight smile. “Thanks though.”

Davis nods and steps away, his footsteps somehow quiet even on the cold marble floor.

Penelope stares at him even as she and Schneider start moving in the direction of his father’s study.

“How does he do that?” She asks, glancing up at him.

“Hm?”

“Walk that quietly on marble flooring wearing dress shoes. It’s kind of impressive. And a little bit freaky.”

The corner of his mouth turns up.

“That’s kind of a good way to describe butlers in general. And maybe they learn how to walk like that at school.”

“What kind of school teaches people to walk quietly?”

“Butler training school, obviously,” he says and she actually has to stop and look at him just to make sure he’s not kidding, and – nope – he’s serious and apparently is not at all surprised to learn that such a thing exists. But then she looks around at the art lining the hallway they’re walking down, the gleaming marble floor she’s walking on, and thinks – well, why wouldn’t there be a butler training school.

They stop in front of a large, ornate wooden door and Schneider just stares at it for a long, tense moment.

Then, he sighs.

“It feels like whatever we hear on the other side of this door, it’s going to change everything.” He glances over at her. “Is that dumb?”

She shakes her head. Then – because she wants to and because she can and because he needs it (and also because she thinks doing so right before they go in to meet with his father is the safest place to do it) – she goes up on her tiptoes and kisses him softly on the cheek, her lips lingering for just a moment longer than necessary before she rests her feet flat on the floor.

“Whatever we hear on the other side of that door and whatever it does or doesn’t change, I’m here for you, no matter what.” She squeezes his hand. “Ok?”

He gives her a intense, steady look, his eyes flicking down to her lips for the barest moment before he nods and brings her hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it.

“Ok,” he says quietly, his breath warm against her fingers. He takes a deep, steadying breath then knocks on the the door.

“Come in,” a deep voice calls from within. She actually expects him to drop her hand before they enter the room – she’s sure his father will have questions about the two of them holding hands that neither of them are prepared to answer – but he just gives her hand a squeeze before he turns the handle and pushes the door in.

His father is sitting on the other side of a large, wooden desk, a large window looking out into the ocean behind him. He’s slightly taller than Schneider, heavier built too, though it’s clear that his age has stolen some of the broadness from his frame. Still, it’s obvious that he and Schneider are father and son. The older Schneider has all the same features as his son, but colder and more angular – as if he were cut from the same marble she’s currently standing on, while his son was fashioned from something more down to earth and warm.

And while the eyes that coolly look her over are blue like Schneider’s, they have none of his brightness. Instead, there’s an iciness to them, pale to the point of almost looking gray.

“Son,” he says, nodding at Schneider. He doesn’t smile, his thin lips instead pressed tightly against each other.

“Father,” Schneider replies in turn.

She works to keep her expression neutral, because even if she expected this sort of reunion, it’s still strange to see in front of her.

It’s not chilly, exactly, despite the obvious lack of warmth. It’s just lacking in any kind of familiarity or emotion, anything to hint that these two men in front of her are father and son rather than two co-workers who happened to be taking the same elevator, or two acquaintances who happen to be standing in line for coffee.

His father shakes Schneider’s hand, then inclines his head towards her.

”And this is?”

“Penelope Alvarez.” Schneider turns towards her. “Penelope, this is my father, Lawrence Schneider.”

His father raises an eyebrow at his son before letting go of his hand and extending it towards her instead.

“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Alvarez.”

She steps forward and grips his hand firmly, almost aggressively so. Let him know that she’s not here to be messed with or, more importantly, to let him mess with Schneider.

“Nice to meet you, Lawrence.” She smiles her brightest smile. “You have a beautiful home.”

He nods at her.

“Thank you.” He studies her for a moment and glances briefly at Schneider before addressing her. “You’re welcome to walk the grounds or relax on the back patio while my son and I talk. The kitchens will make you any food or drink you might like.”

She shakes her head and offers him another wide smile.

“I appreciate the offer, but Schneider wanted me to be here with him when you two talked, so I’ll just stay.”

Lawrence raises an eyebrow at Schneider.

“What we need to discuss is rather delicate.”

Schneider nods.

“That’s why I asked her to be here.”

Lawrence makes a humming noise in the back of his throat.

“The information we’ll talk about is personal, son. Family business and all that.”

“And Penelope is as close to me as family.” He looks over at her, then fixes his father with an emotionless stare. “Closer, actually.”

Lawrence makes that same humming sound again, louder this time, and somehow sounding more irritated despite the fact that it is literally just a vibrating sound at the back of his throat. She decides that she hates that sound.

“I’m not sure how wise it is to share it with just anyone.”

“And I’m sure that Penelope isn’t just anyone,” Schneider says, an edge to his words that she’s never heard before and decides she likes. A lot. “So unless you need her to sign an NDA first, we can just have whatever discussion you want to have.”

“And I don’t mind signing an NDA,” she says quickly, even though the only real knowledge she has about NDAs has to do with the fact that Beyonce apparently makes everyone she knows sign one. “I can definitely sign one.”

Lawrence looks at Schneider, his eyes slitted and impassive, the color of cement after a hard rain. He flicks his gaze down to their intertwined hands, then looks back up and catches her eye. Nothing about his body language or expression changes at all, but she suddenly has the feeling she’s being tested.

She actually has to hold back from scoffing right in his face. She’s been a woman in the army, gone toe-to-toe with her drunken, angry husband on more than one occasion, and grown up with a Cuban mother. Being stared down by some 70 year old man with too much money and too few manners is a cakewalk.

He must decide that she passes muster, because in the next moment he nods.

“No, there’s no need for any of that,” he says, then gestures at the two chairs on the other side of his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

They sit down as Lawrence walks back around his desk and sits down on the other side of it. He picks up a thin stack of stapled papers and hands it to Schneider.

“I thought that this would be best to give you while you were here.”

Schneider grabs it from him and takes a quick look at it, his brows drawing together at the center of his forehead before he looks back up at his father.

“What is this?”

Lawrence steeples his fingers in front of him, and in the dim lighting of the study he almost looks like a villain in a bad movie you’d watch on TBS late at night. He turns his hands and points to the paper that Schneider’s holding.

“It’s exactly what it says it is – a trust document detailing that you are now the beneficiary of a five million dollar trust.” He rests his hands on the table. “That is, of course, US dollars.”

Her eyes go wide and she just barely manages to stifle a gasp when she hears the amount of money. She glances over at Schneider and is struck by the fact that the amount doesn’t seem to affect him at all. He’s looking down at the paper in his hands with a slight furrow between his eyes – and not from surprise or disbelief but in confusion, as though five million dollars is not at all an absurd amount of money to him. Which, judging from everything she’s seen this weekend, probably isn’t.

He looks at up his father.

“Why am I getting this now?”

“Because your mother is dead.” Schneider winces. His father notices but doesn’t change his tone or expression. “And this money was to be given to you after her passing.”

“Mom didn’t have this kind of money.”

“No, but I do.” He motions to the paper that Schneider is holding. “Your mother and I had an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” Schneider narrows his eyes at Lawrence. “Does this have anything do with what Aunt Emily apparently couldn’t tell me?

Lawrence taps his fingers on his desk – slow, methodical and somehow really infuriating.

“What exactly did your Aunt Emily tell you then?”

Schneider takes a deep breath.

“That mom was in recovery.” He shrugs and looks away. “And it wasn’t just me she told – it was everyone at the funeral. Although most of them apparently already knew. Guess I was just the last one to know.” He turns back towards his father. “Again.”

Lawrence ignores the accusatory tone in Schneider’s voice and just nods.

“And that’s all she told you?”

Schneider turns back towards him, his eyes narrowed.

“What else is there?”

Lawrence doesn’t answer the question immediately, just takes a few moments to study Schneider’s expression. He points to the papers in Schneider’s hands.

“The document you’re holding goes into it in full detail.”

“I’d like to hear it from you,” Schneider says evenly.

Lawrence arches his eyebrow at the tone, but doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he nods.

“The agreement stated that if your mother complied with the stipulation to only contact you once a year for the rest of her life, then once she died, you would inherit five million dollars free and clear – no strings attached.” He tilts his head, the movement easy, almost casual – as if he hasn’t just revealed something of staggering cruelty. “As she has now died and fulfilled the terms of that agreement, the promised money is now yours.”

She’s proud of herself for two things: the simple fact that her jaw isn’t residing somewhere on the floor and that she hasn’t leapt over the desk and decked Lawrence in the jaw. In a way, she’s almost too stunned by the depth of his callousness to do anything but stare wide-eyed and only slightly open-mouthed at him.

But where she’s all stillness and silence, Schneider is all movement and noise.

He lets go of her hand and stands up abruptly, walking away towards the window while shaking his head and running his hand over his beard. He’s making short, loud huffing sounds that sometimes sound like sighs, sometimes sound like growls – as though he’s too upset to be able to fully form words.

Not that she blames him.

He spins on his heel and walks back towards them, his eyes slitted and angry, his voice shaking with emotion as he grips Lawrence’s desk.

“Why would you do this? How could you do this to me? All those years being angry with Mom, being upset…not understanding how she could do this to me…and it’s been you all along.” He pushes himself back and runs his hands through his hair as he shakes his head. “You know, I wish I could say I can’t believe you did this to me, but then I’d be lying. Nothing about this feels unbelievable. Not when it’s you.” He grits his teeth and takes a deep breath, exhales it out in one long push. “This is exactly the kind of shit an asshole like you would do.”

It’s shocking on multiple accounts, first because it’s maybe the second or third time in all the years she’s known him that she’s heard Schneider swear and secondly because of the way he says it – seething with anger and hatred, the words coming out as a cross between a hiss and a snarl.

But what’s truly jolting is the way his anger transforms his face and turns him into someone she can barely recognize. His eyes flash coldly against the sudden pallor of his skin – the color of the sea on a cloudy day rather than the brightness of a cloudless sky she’s so used to; his mouth is twisted in a jagged slash across his face, a sneer and a scowl wrenched together. In that moment, she sees the resemblance to his father clearly – almost alarmingly so.

“Careful, son,” his father says, his eyes narrowing, his tone less cautionary and more threatening. “That building you love so much may be in your name, but understand that in every way that matters, it still belongs to me.”

She turns towards him, stunned, wanting to believe Lawrence is less callous than his tone makes him seem.

He’s not. The look on his face is resolute, his features etched in granite. She gets the impression that not only would he take away the building, he’s actually thinking it through right at this moment.

Schneider must realize that too, because he immediately takes a deep breath and lets it out again, repeats that three more times until his eyes lighten and his face softens back to the man she recognizes.

He doesn’t say anything to his father, just walks back slowly to his chair and sits back down. She reaches over and immediately takes his hand, threads his fingers through his and squeezes. He glances over at her and takes another deep breath, squeezing her hand in return before looking back over at Lawrence.

“For how long? How long was this agreement in place?”

“Since the accident.”

Schneider stares him, incredulous.

“The accident – the one from when I was twelve? How –.” He shakes his head. “That was barely anything. I’ve gotten hurt worse on my scooter. There’s no way that convinced you to do this.”

A flicker of irritation lights in Lawrence’s eyes.

“All the same, that was the genesis of the agreement.”

“Why, father?” And the way he says it is less of a question and more of a demand.

The flicker of irritation grows into a flame.

“You got in that accident because she had been drinking.”

Schneider sits back and blinks rapidly.

“I didn’t know that.”

Lawrence nods – a tight, terse motion.

“You didn’t need to know it, so I never told you. But since you insist on treating this agreement like I’ve committed some sort of grave injustice against you, I suppose you expect some kind of an explanation.”

The way he says it – all disgust and irritation, as though he hasn’t committed these huge act of cruel selfishness against his son and is simply being made to placate some spoilt child – makes her want to stand up and just completely rip him a new one.

But then she looks over at Schneider, sees the way he’s gripping the arm rest with so much force his knuckles are turning white, and mentally counts back down from ten. This isn’t her call to make, as much as she cares about Schneider. She can’t fight his battles for him – and it’s obvious that this one has been a long time coming – so she instead takes a deep breath and runs her thumb up and down the side of his hand.

His shoulders relax a bit as she does, his grip on the other side of the chair loosening. He chews on the corner of his lip as Lawrence sits back in his chair and folds his hands, one on top of the other.

“You inherited two things from your mother: your love of art and your predilection for addiction.” He breathes in deeply and lets it out again, the irritation in his expression fading out to stony blandness once more. “The first I could ignore, the second – well –. We’ve both seen how that one turned out.” He arches his eyebrow and tilts his head, sarcasm lilting across his tone. “I guess I should just be thankful you didn’t inherit her mental illness as well.”

That last bit of information is surprising, though as she thinks back to Emily’s eulogy, it suddenly seems less so. A lot of the behavior patterns Emily had described of Schneider’s mom could be ascribed to someone with addiction or mental illness, and she’s been around enough to know that they’re patterns of behaviors that often feed into one another. She’s certainly seen that up close.

Schneider squints at his father, who then arches his brow and slowly nods.

“I see your aunt neglected to mention that.” He shakes his head. “Apparently she shied away from being too honest, then.”

“We didn’t exactly have time to sit down and have a heart to heart before you called me over here.”

“Or maybe your Aunt Emily simply didn’t want to knock over whatever pedestal you’d put your mother on.”

Penelope almost snorts a laugh at that. It speaks to how little about Schneider that Lawrence actually knows for him to possibly think that.

“I knew who mom was,” Schneider says evenly, his jaw clenched tightly around the words.

“Did you? Because you seem awfully upset about what I did to protect you from her.”

Schneider scoffs and shakes his head.

“This had nothing to do with protection,” he grits out, his fingers tightening reflexively around hers. “This was just you being…” He catches the expression on Lawrence’s face – steely and stone-faced – and swallows back whatever it is he was going to say. There’s anger in his eyes still, but fear, too. Lawrence has the trump card of the building in his favor and they both know it.

Instead, Schneider makes a vague hand gesture in the direction of his father and shakes his head.

“You didn’t need to do all this over a bump on my head from a fender bender.”

Lawrence narrows his eyes and there’s a dangerous glint to them that makes her want to stand in front of Schneider. Lawrence leans forward, his palms pressed flat on the desk, his voice low and sharp.

“It wasn’t about the bump on your head.” He leans back, his fingers gripping the desk tightly. “That’s what your mother tried to convince me of, too – that it was just a bump, that it had just been a fender bender.” She sees his jaw working as he swallows back whatever words spring to mind at that, then shakes his head. “She tried to tell me that it had been just one drink at lunch.” He levels a cutting look at Schneider. “Well you know better than anyone, I suppose. It’s always just something – just a drink, just a hit, just a pill. But it never actually is just anything.” He folds his arms across his chest. “Only by some off chance had it been a bump on your head. It could have just as easily been a broken arm or a broken neck. One more drink, one wrong turn, and I could’ve been at the morgue identifying your body.”

His voice shakes a little at the end of the sentence, and for the first time she sees emotion flicker behind the freezing gray of his eyes. In that moment, he actually seems like a father instead of simply the image of one.

In the next second, it’s gone, his face once more impassive and hard, his eyes narrowed nearly to slits.

Still, it leaves her feeling shaken. Because in that very moment she sees it – his father loves him, desperately and honestly and haphazardly. But it’s a twisted, sad sort of love – corrupted by excess and control and ignorance; warped by the inability to recognize the differing values of wealth and affection and time.

She glances over at Schneider to see if he’s had a similar revelation, but all she can on his face is sadness and anger, so much of it that she wishes she could just take him far away from this place and this moment and this awful reality.

“You kept her from me,” he says, practically spitting the words in his father’s direction.

“Don’t be a child,” Lawrence retorts. “I kept you safe. I kept you sober.” He huffs out a sharp breath. “I tried to, at least.”

“Mom could’ve helped. She would’ve. I know she would’ve”

“How, when she could hardly be counted on to stay on her meds, much less stay sober?”

“Because people can change! People can get help and they can get better and they can be different than who they’ve been.” Schneider cries out, releasing her hand and throwing his arms up in the air in frustration and anguish.

“Stop living in a fairytale,” Lawrence grits out. “I was the one who found you when you overdosed – both times. I was the one who put you through six rounds of rehab. I was the one who bought you that building you love so much.” He gives Schneider a look of disgust and shakes his head. “So there’s no need for these dramatics, you know I hate them.”

Schneider looks down, his hands twisting in his lap. She reaches over again and twines her fingers with his, partially to comfort him, partially because she’s having somewhat murderous thoughts towards his father. He takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly before he looks back up at his father.

“She did change, you know. And you could’ve given her a chance for things to be different with us.” He looks up helplessly at his father, his expression sad and lonely. “She’d been sober for ten years before she died.”

She looks closely at Lawrence to see if that surprises him, but he simply shrugs and waves that fact away like it doesn’t matter.

“And before that accident she’d been sober for five.” He folds his hands together and rests them on the desk in front of him. “I knew about this most recent bout of sobriety – she’d even come to me asking for a change in this agreement.” He shakes his head. “But I couldn’t rest your future on the habits of a mentally ill addict.”

She has to bite down hard on her bottom lip to keep herself from saying something that she’s very sure to regret. Schneider, too, tightens his grip around her fingers, like he’s trying to keep himself seated in his chair.

“Don’t, father,” he says through gritted teeth. “She was more than that.”

“Fine,” Lawrence retorts, the word bitten off and jagged. “She was your mother. But the other two things are not insubstantial parts of her, either.”

Schneider shakes his head, refusing to meet Lawrence’s gaze. She can feel him shaking from the effort of holding back all of his fury.

“You were wrong, father,” he says, the words extra soft in an attempt to keep from yelling them across the table, she’s sure. “Doing this…it was wrong.”

Lawrence presses his lips into a firm line.

“Wrong or right, it’s what was done. It’s what I did for you and I have no regrets.” His words have an air of finality that make her want to fight back against him. Because there’s so much more that needs to be said, so much she feels like he needs to explain.

There’s so much more that Schneider deserves from this man.

But then she looks over at Schneider and sees him nod slowly, his gaze measured and steady – as if he’s finally seen something he’s been trying to find for decades.

“It’s what you did to me,” Schneider says quietly. “And you’re never going to admit that it was the wrong thing to do.”

He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, keeps his father locked in his gaze the entire time.

After a long moment, Lawrence blinks, then nods at the stack of papers Schneider’s dropped on the desk.

“Whatever else your mother was, she at least was someone who wanted to make sure you got that money.” He stands up. “So if you’re done throwing a tantrum about inheriting five million dollars, Wesley is in the office with all the required paperwork for you to sign. Charles is waiting for your call if you should so wish it, so you can be certain everything is being signed over in goodwill.”

Schneider takes another deep, calming breath, then nods. Before he stands up, he glances over at Penelope, suddenly uncertain.

Lawrence sighs.

“Come now, son, surely Ms. Alvarez can stay here while you sign a few papers and discuss with the lawyers.” He gestures towards the door. “Everything is all ready for you – it shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

Schneider bites his lip, still hesitating.

She squeezes his hand.

“Hey, this way you have an excuse to get out of there as quickly as possible.” She grins at him before she lets go of his hand. “I knew a few JAGS in the Army – I know how chatty they can get if you let them.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up as he nods and stands up. He gives his father a long, heavy look with his hand on the doorknob, one which his father simply nods at in return. Schneider gives her one last, worrying glance before he leaves the room, the door shutting softly behind him and leaving her sitting across from Lawrence.


	8. Chapter 8

The door barely has time to click shut before Lawrence shifts in his chair, his expression smoothing out to something almost pleasant. Not friendly, exactly, but that professional kind of niceness a realtor might greet you with – the kind that smiles because it wants something from you.

“I apologize that you had to witness that, Ms. Alvarez. Now you see why I thought it might be better for you to spend your time in a more pleasant way than what you just had to sit through.”

“No, I’m glad I stayed. It…” She tips her head back and forth, trying to find a way around saying what she’s thinking, which is that it gave her a quick and easy way to see what a complete asshole he is and apparently always has been. She gives him a tight lipped smile. “It was enlightening.”  

He arches his eyebrow and nods at her.

“So, Ms. Alvarez. Would you like a drink?” He stands up and walks over to a side panel in the unit behind him and opens it up. “I don’t keep anything alcoholic in the house when I know my son will be visiting, but I do have plenty of soft drinks and juices at your disposal.“  

“Uh, just water is fine, thanks.”

“Sparkling ok?”

She nods, watches him take out green bottle and pour it into two separate glasses. He comes over and hands it to her, then stands just off to the side of the desk.

“So, how is it that you know my son?” He asks, looking at her from over his glass.

She takes a small sip of her water, then sets the glass down. She’s not sure why he’s asking – it feels like there must be a purpose other than the obvious – but can’t think of any reason not to answer him truthfully.  

“I live in the building.”

Lawrence raises his eyebrow slightly before he nods.

“And how long have you known him?”

Again, she’s not sure what he’s looking for, so she just goes for the truth.

“We moved in about seventeen years ago, but it was mostly my parents living in the apartment while my husband – ex-husband now – and I were deployed.”

He purses his lips, and she has the feeling that he’s impressed without really wanting to be.

“What branch of the armed forces?”

“Army Staff Sergeant, deployed as a medic.”

“And now that your enlistment is done, you run your own clinic?”

She chuckles.

“It sometimes feels like I am.” She takes another drink of water. “I’m a nurse at a doctor’s office and going to school to become an NP.”

He nods.

“That’s an admirable career path.”

She gives him another closed-mouth smile.

“I think so, too.”

Lawrence walks back over to the drinks cabinet and opens up a bottle of ginger ale.

“And my son?” He asks, topping off his glass before looking up at her. “Who is he to you?”

He asks in the same easy tone as before, but his stance has changed – his shoulders squared, his feet firmly planted. Almost like he’s ready to go into battle.

Alright then, she thinks. Bring it on.  

“Your son is important to me,” she says, meeting his gaze directly, making sure her words are firm and direct. “He’s someone I care about deeply.”  

It comes out easily, as though this isn’t the first time she’s ever really had to think about or say out loud what Schneider means to her. And why shouldn’t it, though? Both those things are true, and have been for a long time now.

“Hm. And what is it exactly that you see in him?”

It’s a strange question and she really doesn’t know what he means by it or what he’s trying to figure out, so she replies with the most honest answer she can give.

“He’s a good man.”

He arches his brow.

“I see.” He tilts his head at her and studies her expression. He comes back around and sits down at the desk, setting his drink down in front of him. She works on keeping her face as passive and neutral as possible. Whatever it is he’s hoping to find, she wants to make it as hard as possible on him.  

After a long moment, he nods, tapping his fingers across the top of his desk.

“You know, being a good man has never been the problem for my son. It’s certainly never what I’ve found myself wishing for.”

“So what is?”

He shrugs.

“There are times I would’ve rather had a stronger son. A smarter son.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms in front of him. “A sober son.” He makes an acquiescing gesture with his hands. “And yes, he’s sober  _now_  – though I always wonder for how long – but I’ve had to give up on the other two.”

She shakes her head, not bothering to hide the distaste she feels towards him.

“You’re wrong, Lawrence. Schneider is both those things.” She holds up a hand. “Maybe not book smart, but smart enough to keep that building running, to fix anything that breaks himself, to know what it is that people need – whether that’s a new faucet that won’t leak or an extra hour every afternoon so they aren’t lonely.” She blows out a harsh puff of air, allowing herself to fully sink into the frustration and anger she held back on the entire time he and Schneider were arguing. “He is so much stronger than you give him credit for – so much stronger than even I ever really gave him credit for. And you know how I know?”

She doesn’t expect Lawrence to say anything – and he doesn’t – just raises an eyebrow.  

She gives him hard stare.

“I know because now I’ve met you and I understand what it was like for him when he was growing up, and despite all that, he still grew up to be kind and caring and so incredibly loving. He was strong enough to not just be a better man than you, which would be easy, but to be a good one.”

He gives her a long, thoughtful stare. He doesn’t even seem offended at her words – more curious than anything.

“How serious is it between you and my son?”

She doesn’t say anything. Partially because she doesn’t really know what to say – it’s a question that’s both too soon and too late, really – but also because even if she did, this man in front of her is the last person she’d talk to it about.

He tilts his head, studying her closely.

“You’re here with him at an emotional and difficult time in his life, which means that you understand the importance of emotional support and that he trusts you to be that support for him. He’s never brought anyone with him back home the few times he has visited, which means that you must be something different to him.”

She nods, but otherwise tries to keep her expression impassive.

“Like I said – he’s important to me. And not just to me – to my kids, to my mom. To basically everyone in the entire building.”

He tilts his head at her.

“So you have children.”

She nods.

“I do.”

“And yet you don’t approve of the way I chose to protect mine.”

She shakes her head, not even bothering to deny it.

“No, because this wasn’t about protection, it was about control.”

Lawrence scoffs.

“And what makes you so sure of this?”

“Because there are a lot of other options you could’ve taken before you went full Bond villain.” She draws herself up in her chair as she leans forward. “If it was really just about protection, you could’ve granted her parenting time when he was a child based on having her take a drug test. You could’ve written sobriety testing and drug interventions into the custody agreement. After he turned 18, you could’ve tied the trust account to her continued sobriety or given her the opportunity to amend the agreement if she ever showed progress in staying sober.”

She shakes her head.

“But you didn’t do any of that. Because it was never about his protection, it was about you getting to control the people around you.”

He presses his mouth into a firm line before he clears his throat.

“From the way you feel at liberty to criticize my own choices, it would seem as though you have some experience with something similar to my own circumstances.” He shakes his head. “But your choices are your own, just as mine are my own. I don’t regret what I did, and I doubt I ever will.”

She huffs angrily and shakes her head.

“Of course you don’t, because damn whatever it did to the people around you as long as you got to do what you wanted.”

Lawrence takes a deep breath, real anger flashing in his eyes for a moment before his face smoothes out to that infuriating stoniness once again. He steeples his hands in front of his face and she has to bite down hard on her lip to not point out the fact that doing so only reinforces what a villain he is.

Briefly she wonders if maybe that’s the whole reason he does it.  

“Ms. Alvarez,” he begins, his voice frustratingly placating. “Say you have a dog and that dog wants a piece of chocolate cake. But you can’t give that cake to your dog because you know it’ll poison him. You know it may kill him. And while that dog may beg and plead and cry, while he may hate you for not giving him that cake, you know that that dog cannot survive eating it.” He brings his hands down in front of him and leans forward across the table. “So you do what your dog cannot understand – you take his ability to have the cake away from him. For his own good.”

“Schneider isn’t a dog or a pet or your plaything!” She cries out, feeling like she has never before understood the phrase  _tearing out my hair_ like she does at this very moment. “He’s your son, and you had no right to take away his choice to have a relationship with his mother.”

Lawrence shakes his head.

“Surely you’ve noticed by now – my son hasn’t done so well making his own choices.” He lists each point out with a tap of his finger against his thumb. “No college degree, no career, no real direction in life. Nothing to show, despite a life filled with every opportunity money could buy.”

She stands up in her chair, her palms flat on the desk.

“Maybe none of those things would’ve happened if he knew someone cared about him. If he knew that someone loved him – that he was someone worth loving!” She knows her voice is rising but she doesn’t care. It’s beyond her to think that someone like this raised Schneider and can’t see what a shitty job he did of it. “Maybe it could’ve been different if he knew that his mother hadn’t just abandoned him for thirty years of his life for no reason, if he knew that his father loved him!”

He scoffs.

“Please, Ms. Alvarez. I’m far too old and you’re far too smart to think that love can solve problems like these.” He taps his fingers across the top of the desk. “His mother was an addict. My son is an addict. Love wasn’t going to solve either of those things.” He shakes his head. “And as far as how I treated him, it wasn’t love that he needed but money. It was money that needed to be applied to that issue. Money that kept her from him, money that got him sober, that got him that building, that is responsible for the man he is today.”

She shakes her head angrily, her next words cold and low in her throat.

“Schneider is responsible for the man he is today.” She leans across the desk at him and glares at him. “Not you, not your money. He is the man he is today because he worked for it.”

Lawrence huffs out a harsh laugh.

“Really? Then it would be the first thing he’s ever really worked at.”

That one in particular hurts, in part because there is some version of her that would’ve once said the same thing. But that was before she took the time to understand how difficult of a journey his sobriety had been, before she knew what kind of man he might have been and actively fought against becoming.

“What do you think my son is going to do with free reign and five million dollars?” He leans back in his chair and shakes his head. “If I were a betting man, I’d say he’s back in rehab by the end of the year.” He tilts his head at her. “And I also bet that you’ll be nowhere to be found at that time. And it’ll be me once again, who’ll pick him back up, to get him better and to get him back on his feet.”

“You’re wrong, Lawrence,” she says, the words jagged and angry. "He’s so much stronger and smarter and better than you think he is, and the fact that you never thought that is part of the reason why he’s struggled so much to stay sober. Which means  _you’re_  part of the reason he struggled so much to stay sober.” She sits back down, her knuckles turning white from the force of her grip on the table. “And you know what? He’s going to be just fine. Because even if – God forbid – something does happen, _I’m_  gonna be there for him. _I’m_  gonna be with him and support him no matter what. And my daughter is gonna be there, and my son is gonna be there, and my mother is gonna be there. And he’s gonna be ok. For the rest of his life, he’s gonna be ok, he’s gonna know that he matters, he’s gonna know that he’s loved, no matter what. You better believe that I’m gonna make damn sure of it.”

Lawrence lets out a bitter laugh.

“If that is true, Ms. Alvarez…” He tips his head to the side as he looks at her with slitted eyes. “Then I have to wonder if you would’ve been so inclined had he not just inherited five million dollars.”

“Are you kidding me?” And she just barely manages to keep herself from adding an expletive right after the word ‘you’. “Not everything is about money, Lawrence! We are not all you!”

“Ms. Alvarez, my son is an absurdly wealthy yet weak-willed man desperate for affection. You’re a divorced single mother who is – I assume – the sole provider, or close to it, for two children and an aging mother. It isn’t difficult to see what’s going on here.”  

“What’s going on here,” she says through gritted teeth, her body nearly vibrating with anger, “is that I care about Schneider and I want to be there for him no matter what. I couldn’t care less about how much money he has in his bank account.”

Lawrence barks out a sharp, grating laugh.

That’s how I know how calculating you are, Ms. Alvarez.” He shakes his head. “The way you said that was almost enough to make me believe that you aren’t a liar.”  

“That’s enough, father,” Schneider snarls from the doorway, the words cracking through the air, propelled forward by cold fury.

He advances towards his father with his fists clenched at his side, his eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched so tightly she can see the muscle working in his cheek. For a brief moment, she actually thinks he’s going to hit his father.  

Maybe Schneider does too, because he stops abruptly at her chair and grips the back of it tightly. She immediately reaches back to rest her hand on his and feels him shaking with rage.

“I don’t care what you say to me, but you will not talk to Penelope that way. Understand?”

Lawrence doesn’t say anything, just looks curiously at the two of them, like they’re a math problem he can’t quite figure out.

She feels Schneider getting ready to push off from her chair and – what? Throw something against the wall? Fist fight his 70 year old father? She’s really not sure, and she really doesn’t want him to do anything he’ll end up regretting, no matter how much she thinks Lawrence has it coming.

So she wraps one hand around his wrist, rests the other heavily on his hand and squeezes.

He takes a deep, shaky breath, and she hears him grinding his teeth together so loudly that she winces at the sound of it.  

“Do. You. Understand.” He repeats, the words a grating rasp, ripped out through gritted teeth.  

His father levels a long, long look at him, then barely inclines his head.

“Apologies, Ms. Alvarez.”

She doesn’t say anything to that – she’d be pretty ok if she never had to say anything to him for the rest of her life. Instead she nods and picks up her clutch from where she set it down by her feet and stands up. She immediately moves next to Schneider and laces her fingers with his, wraps her other hand firmly around his forearm.    

She feels him relax a little at her touch and moves closer to him. She can still feel the waves of rage and emotion radiating out from him, and she wants to make sure she can keep him grounded enough to get out of here as quickly as possible. Of course, she’s angry too that Lawrence would assume some kind of manipulative ulterior motive behind her actions, but, at the same time, the notion that she’d ever be interested in anyone – particularly Schneider – solely for their money is so absurd it comes back around to honestly being hilarious.   

“The paperwork is all signed and I have an appointment with Aunt Emily regarding mom’s will, so we’re leaving.” His voice is pitched low, the words taut with tension. “I’m sure anything else can be handled through our lawyers.”

There’s a finality to his words that makes her think that he means them to be about more than just the trust account. She tries to see what Lawrence’s reaction is, but Schneider apparently has no similar interests in such a thing. He doesn’t wait for his father to say anything, just turns around and heads for the door.

She tilts her head back slightly so she can catch anything he might say – a plea to wait or an explanation or even a goodbye – but the last sound she hears from the room is the door thudding shut behind them. 

* * *

Schneider has about a full foot of height on her, something she’s noticed before but never really thought about with too much depth.

She’s thinking about it now as they walk down the hall, and she has to break into a half-jog to keep up with his pace. He’s taking the longest possible strides as quickly as he can, like he can’t get out of the house fast enough.

She doesn’t say anything, even though she’s pretty sure she’s currently developing blisters from the pace. She watches as the tension fades from his shoulders every step away from his father that he takes, sees the way his expression relaxes – eyes losing their dark ferocity, the line of his mouth softening, the furrow between his brows smoothing out.  

Still, she’s glad when he stops at the top of the steps and takes a deep breath before closing his eyes and turning his face up towards the sun. She’s a little bit out of breath as it is, and there’s no way she could’ve kept up with him going down the steps in heels.

“I’ve never talked to father like that before,” he says quietly, his eyes still closed. He takes another deep breath before opens his eyes and looks over at her. “But I felt like I needed to say it.”

She nods and leans into him.

“I’m glad you said it to him. He deserved to hear it.”  She squeezes his hand. “How do you feel?”

He chews the corner of his lip, then tilts his head and meets her gaze.

“Weird but…good. Lighter, I guess, if that makes sense? Like maybe I should’ve said a lot of those things to him a long time ago.” He turns around and stares at the house for a long moment. “I don’t think…” He clears his throat. “I’m never coming back here again.”

It’s a goodbye and a promise wrapped into one, melancholy and satisfaction chasing one another across his features. He turns back around to face her.

“There is one place I wanna go before we leave though.” He gestures to a gravel path just to the left of them. “You wanna walk down to the beach? There’s a little walkway down to it – it’s not far.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

The corner of his mouth curves up before he turns and leads them both towards the gravel path.

“My mom would take me down here all the time when I was a kid – we’d spend hours swimming and playing and building forts.” He gives her a small smile, though it’s shaky at the edges. “Even when she stopped coming around, I still loved it. I stayed out here the whole night before I had to leave for America.”  

They stop at the top of a flight of narrow stone steps. Schneider squeezes her hand before he lets go and walks down in front of her. She reaches down and takes off her shoes before starting down behind him, holding the handrail as she looks out at the landscape before her.

It’s different than the beaches she’s used to – miles of open sand with a skyline dotted with palm trees. Here, the stairs wind down into a thinly wooded area with a rocky, log lined beach just on the other side of the treeline. The smells here, too, are different – earth and pine mixed in with the salt spray of the sea.

Schneider reaches the treeline and looks back up at her, the wind brushing his hair, the edges of his wool coat ruffling out behind him. He’s set against a backdrop of trees, the sun breaking through the clouds in the exact right place to frame where he’s standing. She’s never really considered herself as having much of an eye for photography, but as she stares down at him, hands in the pockets of his long, dark gray coat, his tailored black suit perfectly fit to his frame, she thinks –  _goddamn, that’s art._

“Everything ok?” He asks, his blue eyes made brighter by the cool tones of the forest around him.

She smiles.

“Just appreciating the view,” she calls out, and maybe she lets her tone dip into something that might be described as flirtatious.  

The uncertain look on his face fades into a grin.  
  
“You know, it’s even better up close.”

She lets out a delighted laugh, partially because it’s the kind of cheesy line that would make her laugh, but mostly because it’s the exact kind of cheesy line that Schneider would say and the fact that he’s saying it now means that he’s feeling more like himself. The grin on his face blooms into a full smile, the remaining tension leaking away from his shoulders as he takes a deep breath and leans against the railing. For the first time since they got to the house, he’s back to looking like  _her_  Schneider.

Whatever it is that means.

He waits for her to come down to where he’s standing before he starts down again.   
The last step drops off onto the beach and Schneider hops down before reaching up and holding his hand out to her.

“Wait, you should take off your shoes first – so you don’t get sand in them.”

He nods, toeing them both off and stuffing his socks in them, then leaving them up on the last step. She sets her shoes next to them before she takes his hand and jumps off into the sand, threading her fingers through his the moment that she lands.

“There’s something really relaxing about feeling the sand beneath your feet, you know?”

He smiles down at her and nods. She leans into him as they walk towards the ocean trying to steal some of his warmth as a shiver running up her spine as a gust of wind whips off the ocean.  

He glances down at her with a worried look on his face, then tugs her over to row of bleached logs.

“Over here ok? It looks like the one sunny spot on the beach right now.” He frowns as she tries – and fails – to suppress a shiver. “Or we can just go back up. I forgot how cold it gets close to to the beach – I’m sorry, Pen.”

She shakes her head.

“Schneider, it’s fine, I’m just being a wimp.” She bites her lip as an idea pops into her mind, then before she can change her mind she decides to just go with it. “Here, I have an idea – sit down right there – .” She points to a sunny patch of beach right next to a large fallen log. “You can lean back against the log and I can lean back against you, and that way we’ll both be warm.”

She’s says it matter of factly, as if there is no other possible way to keep warm on a windswept beach other than the cuddle close to one another (and, really, it is the best way to stay warm and therefore stay down at the beach). Schneider, too, takes it in stride, his eyes only widening momentarily before he nods and drops down to the sand, his coat flaring out beneath him as he settles back against the log.

His legs are splayed out in front of him, knees bent, with his elbows resting on top of his knees.

She smiles before she walks out in front of him and carefully sits down on the ground in between his outstretched legs. She eases herself back until she’s right up against his chest, his arms immediately moving down to wrap around her waist. She sighs and leans back into him, and she rests her arms on top of his as she laces their fingers together.

“Are you warm enough?” He asks, his breath ruffling the hair against her cheek.

She nods even as another shiver lances through her.  

“You sure?”

She chuckles before sinking further back into him, his arms tightening around her as she does.

“This is perfect.” She rests her head back against his shoulder. “In fact, you might not be allowed to ever move from this spot again.”

He hugs her close to him, and she can feel him rub his cheek against the top of her head.

“That’d be ok with me.”

They’re quiet for a long moment – just listening to the crash of the waves against the shore, the gulls crying out in the afternoon sky. Schneider sighs behind her, his whole body shifting with the gesture.

“I’m sorry about father.”

She turns her head so that she can meet his eyes as she shakes her head.

“Don’t be, Schneider. It’s not your fault that he’s the way that he is.”

He looks away from her and lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug.

“I shouldn’t have left you with him.” He chews on the corner of his lip before he glances back over at her then away again. “I’m sorry that he said those things about you.”

“Hey.” She reaches up and rests her hand against his cheek, turns his head so he’s facing her again before resting her hand back down on his thigh. “I was fine. And you don’t need to apologize for the things that your father said. I don’t care what he thinks about me or says about me.” She tilts her head, wondering. “How much did you hear?”  

He clears his throat.

“You were both pretty loud – I could hear you two down the hall.” He looks down at her. “I heard him say that he thought you were using me. I heard him say why he thought so.”

“So then you also heard what I had to say about that line of thinking?”

He nods, and suddenly seems bashful and unable to look her in the eye.

“You didn’t have to say those things about me, Pen.”

“Why wouldn’t I? They’re true.” She tips her head down and angles it so she can meet his gaze, but he keeps shifting his eyes so that he looks out towards the ocean instead.

“Father thought that we were together. Not just here together but – you know – something more.” He takes a deep breath before he looks at her. “I’m really, really sorry about that, Pen. I’m sorry that he thought that.”

It’s the strangest apology, mostly because she’s not even really sure what it is exactly he’s apologizing for. She studies his face, trying to puzzle it out. He won’t meet her eyes, but she can read his expression well enough to see the self-loathing and uncertainty lingering in the downturn of his mouth and in the corner of his eyes.

She narrows her eyes as she realizes what it might mean, and it makes her want sprint back up the stairs and confront his father all over again.

She shifts in his arms so that she can more easily face him and reaches over and lays her hand on his cheek and waits until he finally looks over at her.

“Hey.” She brushes her thumb against his cheekbone. “You know that your father thinking that we’re together isn’t an insult to me.”

He looks away from her again.

“He meant it as one.”

“Well, it’s not. Schneider, hey.” She trails her fingertips across the curve of his cheek, which has the intended result of making him look back over at her. “It’s not an insult. At all.” She shrugs and gives him a small smile  “And it’s not even that crazy of an assumption to make – the two of us being together. I’m here with you, and I’m here because I do think that you’re important and I didn’t want you to go through this alone. So however he meant it, that’s true.”

He stares at her intently, his bright blue eyes suddenly the color of the sea in a storm. The sound of the waves and the wind and the gulls drops out behind them completely as he flicks his gaze momentarily to her lips before he lets out on unsteady breath.

“I feel like I should tell you that I really, really want to kiss you right now.” He swallows, then forces his gaze back up to meet her eyes. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

She laughs and drops her head forward, shaking it from side to side because this whole situation is absurd and intoxicating and a little bit scary.

She takes a sharp breath in and lifts her head to look at him. Sees the uncertainty and fear and hope warring across his features and decides that he deserves the same kind of honesty and openness he’s offering her – that he’s always offered to her.

“Well, then I’ll say that I really, really would like to be kissed by you –.” His eyes go wide and he starts to lean towards her, and it’s only the loud cry of a gull that jolts her out of the moment enough to hold her hand up towards him. “But I agree that it’s not a good idea.”

He takes a deep breath and nods slowly, though he’s still staring at her lips.

“Uh, ok. Just –.” He bites his lip and looks intently at her, and that movement is way more attractive than it has a right to be. “Can you tell me why you think it wouldn’t be a good idea?”

“Because in the past four days, you found out your mom had died, that she was a recovering addict, that your dad had set up a contract forcing her to stay away from you and that because of it, you’d inherited five million dollars.” She tilts her head up at him. “That’s a lot of emotional turmoil, Schneider, and I once heard that you shouldn’t reply to someone when you’re mad, make promises when you’re happy and make decisions when you’re sad.”

He narrows his eyes at her.

“That sounds like it was something you would’ve posted on your Instagram.”

“It wasn’t.” Schneider raises a brow at her. She huffs and presses her lips together firmly to try to keep from smiling. “Ok, it was but it doesn’t make it less true.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right, you’re right.” He lets go of one of her hands and runs his fingers through his hair.

“Why did you think it was a bad idea?” She asks, mostly to distract herself from the sudden, ill-timed desire to run her own fingers through his hair.

He bites his lip and shrugs.

“Well, first of all, I didn’t think you would actually want to kiss me back. I kind of thought you’d say  _ugh_  or  _that is my nightmare_ or  _have you been bodysnatched while you were in your father’s house_ , and then of course I’d have to convince you that I hadn’t been bodysnatched by answering a bunch of questions that – .”

“Schneider.”

“Yeah, yeah, right.” He clears his throat. “So, that was before. But now that I know that you would in fact kiss me back I think it’s probably a bad idea to kiss you because then…” He takes a deep breath and stares at her with some absurdly attractive mix of tenderness and longing. “Well, If I kissed you now, I would never stop kissing you.”

She stares at him for a long, heady moment then scrambles away from him and stands up, her arms outstretched in front of her.

“Yeah, I cannot be in this same –.” She waves vaguely in his general direction. “I can’t be that close to you right now,” she finishes up, shaking her head with her hand out in front of her like she’s trying to ward him off. “That was too good a line.”

“It wasn’t a line, but I agree.” He gets up enough to sit himself down on the log and then scoots over to the far side of it. “I should probably just be over here for – uh – a bit.”

“I mean, yeah, right?” She spins her hands in front of her in a circle as she begins speaking. “There’s a lot that’s happened, there’s a lot of changes that have been going on, and this feeling is just so new for the both of us – what?”

He folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head.

“Nothing, I think you’re totally, absolutely, 100% right, I definitely agree with you on everything you just said.”

“You made a face.”

He squints at her and tilts his head to the side, his arms flung out on either side of him.

“Maybe this is just my face?”

She shakes her head.

“No, I’m pretty familiar with all the Schneider faces.” She walks up closer to him, her eyes narrowed. “You made a face, Schneider – what was that face?”

He sighs heavily and uncrosses his arms, holding his hands out in front of him plaintively.

“Just, uh - this feeling -.” He motions to the space between them. “It’s not exactly new for me.”

She draws her brows together.

“What do you mean?”  

He takes a deep breath and lets it out again slowly, his hands burrowing deep into his pockets.

“Well, uh, you know. It’s kind of like the moon – sometimes it’s full and out there and it’s all you can think about. Sometimes it’s just a tiny sliver and you can almost forgot it’s even there. And sometimes it can seem like it’s not there at all.” He shrugs. “But even at those times, even when you can’t necessarily see it, you know it hasn’t really gone anywhere. And you know…” He gives her a small half smile. “You know that having it around makes everything in your life better.”

She tilts her head at him and smiles, because even if her emotions are a jumbled, confusing mess right now, she still can’t help but think this whole thing is unbearably adorable.

“We’re still talking about the moon?”

“Yeah, the metaphor kind of fell apart there at the end.” He huffs a laugh, then runs his hand over his beard. “The point is – wanting to kiss you…it’s not new to me.” He shakes his head and looks at her helplessly. “Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”

She bites her lip and takes a deep breath.

“But you’ve never said anything. Before, you know, all this.” She makes a vague gesture towards his father’s house.

“I mean, you never…did anything or hinted at…something. At least nothing that –.” She stops abruptly, because what she means to say next is ‘ _nothing that I would take seriously’_. 

And maybe that’s the problem – that it never really occurred to her to take him seriously. She takes a deep breath, then walks slowly over to him and wraps his hand in hers. 

“How come you never said anything before now?”

He looks down at their clasped hands and hunches his shoulders up towards his ears, his next words so soft that she has to lean in closer to hear them.

“Because you’re the moon, Penelope.” And the way he says it makes her think that her name has never sounded lovelier. He looks up at her, his blue eyes soft and tender. “Beautiful, but always out of reach.”

_Holy shit._

She doesn’t mean to say that out loud – doesn’t even realize she has until Schneider’s eyebrows shoot up and he starts laughing.

She feels her face warming up before she starts laughing too. She tugs him forward and up onto his feet, moving towards him and wrapping her arms around his waist. She buries her face in his chest as his arms settle on her shoulders, his chin resting on top of her head.

“Your talent is wasted on your Instagram captions.”

Schneider chuckles softly.

"I’m just happy that you’re finally admitting that you actually like my Instagram captions.”

She moves back from him enough to look up and meet his eyes.

She means to tease him and point out that his Instagram captions don’t necessarily seem like the thing he should be happy about at this moment, but then she sees a melancholy kind of uncertainty in his eyes and realizes that she’s avoided answering the question he didn’t even mean to ask.

She steps away from him – still close enough to see the worry flare up in his eyes, but far enough away where she isn’t distracted by the warmth and closeness of him.

“So you know there are footprints on the moon, right?”

He furrows his brows – though the uncertainty in his expression lifts, a desperate kind of longing pushing in at the edges of his gaze.

“Yeah, I know.”

“So that means it isn’t out of reach.” She laces their fingers together and smiles at him. “And neither am I.”  

Schneider’s eyes go wide as a slow grin starts to crawl across his features.

“So you’re saying I’m an astronaut?”

She laughs and thinks that she really must be in deep because his response makes her want to kiss him instead of want to roll her eyes.

“I’m saying that we have some things we need to figure out.”

“And you want to figure them out with me? Together?”

She nods, the smile on her face so broad and bright that her cheeks hurt. The only reason she doesn’t feel completely ridiculous about it is because Schneider’s is equally – if not more – wide and bright.

“Yeah, I do.”

He nods at her, an almost dazed look of happiness on his face.

“You  _do_.  _You_  do. Ok, wow. So you – um – wow. I mean, what – uh. How –. Huh. Um.”

He shakes his head and looks so completely and adorably overwhelmed that she laughs out loud and steps forward again to give him a hug.

“I don’t mean that we need to figure it all out – you know – right at this moment.” She rests her chin on his chest and looks up at him. “I’m not sure one of us even can figure it out right now.”

He smiles as he brings his arms up around her.

“No, probably not.” He sighs deeply, a brief look of apprehension flashing across his features. “And we don’t really have the time, either – we’re gonna be late to meet Aunt Emily as it is.”

She blinks rapidly up at him.

“Oh, that’s a real thing.” She grins at him when she sees the confused expression on his face. “I kinda thought it was just a thing you made up to give us an excuse to leave.”

He shakes his head.

“No, she really is expecting us.”

She nods, then steps back away from him.

“So, we should get going then?”

“Yeah, we should get going.” Again, that look of apprehension flickers across his features, so heavy and dark that she could get away with calling it dread. Before she can ask about it, he clears his throat and gives her a grin that she can only describe as (and really, thank god for that SAT prep book) –  _salacious_. “But we could also just stay here a little longer and figure things out.”

She scoffs and steps back from him, mostly because it seems easier to say no to temptation if she’s further away from him.

“Please. You are not that cute.”

He tilts his head at her, his grin softening into something less suggestive and more charming.

“Nah, you think I am.”

She rolls her eyes at that, though she can’t fight the smile on her face as she does.

“Shut up,” she says, reaching out towards him with intention of pushing him away.

He catches her hand in his, his long fingers wrapping around her own. Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he brings her hand up and softly kisses her palm.

It makes her literally go weak at the knees.

“So you’re sure you don’t want me to kiss you?” He asks, his voice soft, rough with emotion – or maybe, the holding back of it.

It’s almost enough to make her shake her head no – to make her close the gap between them and press her lips against his.

But then she thinks about that look of apprehension on his face, the dread that flashed across his features, and lays her hand on the side of his face instead.

“It depends. Do you want to kiss me to kiss me, or because you want to avoid thinking about going to see your Aunt Emily?”

He closes his eyes and sighs as he leans his face into her palm.

“Both, I guess?” He sighs again before opening his eyes and giving her a rueful look. “Yeah, ok. I see what you’re saying.”

She smiles, soft and warm, and lets her fingertips trace a line down his jawline.  

“When you kiss me, I want to kiss you back knowing that I’m not just a way for you to forget that you’re sad or angry or worried.” She brushes her thumb across his cheekbone. “And I think that’s what you want, too.”

He nods, his hand coming up to cover hers as he turns his face to kiss the pulsepoint at her wrist.

“Yeah, you’re right. That is what I want.”

She brings her hand down from his face and laces her fingers through his.

“So we should get going?”

He nods and smiles at her, and even though that same look of apprehension flickers in behind his eyes, she can tell the smile is genuine.

“Yeah, we should get going.”  

They walk quietly over to the steps. Before he pulls himself up to the first step, he turns around and looks out across the beach. He lets out a long exhale, and she thinks he looks sadder to leave the beach than he did leaving his father behind.

She squeezes his hand.

“We could always come back.” She smiles up at him. “I mean, not to this beach, but some other one. Or whatever other places you love in Vancouver.” She leans against him, reaches over with her other hand to wrap both their intertwined ones. “It’d be nice to come back with you when it’s not so cold.”

He looks down at her and smiles, wide and bright and incandescently happy.

“Ok.” He says quietly, that one simple word brimming hope and happiness and affection. He lifts her hand to his mouth and presses his lips to the back of it. “We’ll make sure to come back when it’s not so cold.”


End file.
